Sega has announced that they are now accepting signups for the closed beta test of Phantasy Star Online 2 in Japan. Interested players can sign up at the official site, which also provides a brief overview of the next round of testing. Players who registered for the previous alpha tests don't need to register again.
The closed beta test itself is scheduled to begin sometime at the end of April. For those who want to get a head start on creating characters, the character creator will be made available for download beginning next Thursday (April 5). This standalone application will apparently also provide benchmarking tools for those people interested in tuning their PC to play nice with PSO2. The system requirements do not appear to have changed since the alpha tests.
In addition to general gameplay and balance testing, the developers also plan to test their implementation of the "Arks Cash" system by giving players 10,000 AC to play with once the test begins. As we previously mentioned, Sega has announced that Phantasy Star Online 2 will be free-to-play, with "Arks Cash" being the method by which players can blow their real-life money on the game. I'll reserve judgment on this feature for another day; needless to say we probably need to see more details on how "Arks Cash" will work.
The official closed beta signup site also provides some information about a potential release date. According to Sega, official service is scheduled to begin in the "early summer", so we're probably not more than three months away from the release (assuming Sega keeps their word). Of course, this is only for Japan. No release date has been announced yet for the United States or Europe.
Despite the lack of news on a stateside release, there may be indications that Sega is planning for one. Some groups datamining the latest PSO2 alpha client have found media files possibly intended for a US version. Could Sega already be working on a localization of the game?
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