PSU Turns Three

And to think I almost missed this occasion! This past Saturday, PSU officially made it through its third year of existence in the United States and Europe.

Last year at this time, I put together a similar anniversary post in which I ranted about the slow trickle of content updates being made available on the US/EU servers. I argued that continuing this policy of drip-feeding content in the third year would cause many players to quit the game:

As we enter the game's third year, there's still quite a bit of content left to see. Events, S3 missions, story missions, and plenty of other stuff is out there. Sega needs to get on the ball and get the game back on track, though; otherwise, PSU may not ever make it to October 24 again.

Let's take a look back at Year Three and see what significant new content we've gotten since last October 24.

• - Master classes and new story mission (Ep3 Chapter 6) -- December 19, 2008
• - Winter Mission Carnival -- January 23, 2009
• - Desert Arms Shop -- March 27, 2009
• - Shred the Darkness -- April 17, 2009
• - Innocent Girl -- June 12, 2009
• - Protectors: Gamma/Delta -- July 3, 2009
• - First S3 missions -- August 7, 2009
• - Moatoob Relics (Citadel of Sand) and new party mission (Security Breach) -- August 28, 2009
• - Protectors: Alpha+/Beta+ -- September 25, 2009
• - New story mission (Ep3 Chapter 7) -- October 6, 2009

Along with a scattering of upgraded mission difficulties and level cap increases, those were the bulk of the updates over the last year. The slow release of content continued, with "major" updates monthly that added only one or two missions.

Sega has done a lot better with events, however. In the past year we've had four events, which succeeded in bringing back some players (at least for a little while). However, the regular population continues to decline on both the PC/PS2 and Xbox 360 servers in between these events.

The next major content update hits October 30, with the Guardians Colony GBR, the Colony rare mission, and a level cap increase to 170. However, this seems about on par with the monthly update strategy that Sega seems to be employing, so I don't expect the population situation to change anytime soon. There are certainly some interesting times in store for the next year. Will we make it to a fourth anniversary?

Honestly, I'm rather amazed that we made it to the third anniversary!