Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Happy Anniversary

On July 9, 2012, Sega of America officially announced that Phantasy Star Online 2 would be getting an English release in the United States and Europe.

Exactly one year later, I don't think anybody really knows how much closer we are to an English release – except Sega, and they aren't saying anything. Even the official PSO2 Web site looks the same as it did last year.

I must admit that Sega of America's silence in the face of withering criticism has been rather puzzling to me. In the time since the initial announcement was made, Sega has said almost nothing about the game (except that it was delayed). When Sega revealed the list of games being shown off at E3, and PSO2 wasn't one of them, their official blog was lit up with posts complaining about the lack of news.

Is there really nothing that Sega can say about the progress of this game's localization? Nothing that has changed since the announcement last year? At the very least Sega could try to offer some sort of explanation for the delay. Any news at this point would help stem the tide of rumors that an official English version of PSO2 is nothing more than high-profile vaporware.

There is some good news in all of this: so much time has passed since the initial announcement that casual fans may have forgotten about it already. Sega may be waiting until they're sure of a release date to announce the game again and bring these people back into the fold. (You never know what kind of crazy plans these marketing people are cooking up.)

For the rest of the community, though, a full year without news is ridiculous. Sega needs to either:
  1. Provide some sort of explanation for the delay, or
  2. Just say the English version is cancelled already so everyone can go play the Japanese version full-time
...I'm not holding my breath for either of those things to happen, though. Here's (not) hoping for another year of silence from Sega!

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