Creating and hosting a MMO is not affordable. Even if the dev work is already done, you still need to get a translation team, client service , and servers to host the match. What occurred to SEGA that they had to cut funding for the localization job? Our first clue is that Atlus was in danger after its parent company filed for bankruptcy back in June of 2013. The enterprise to purchase Atlus was none apart from SEGA. Even with all the company being held alfoat by SEGA, the business required to make revenue. Cue the milking of hot titles Persona 4 and 3. Regardless of what actually occurred, we can see that SEGA has been on a downward trend financially over the last ten years. It is possible to have a peek at the printed financial reports for yourself. While PSO2 Meseta continues to be one of their most prosperous titles, it doesn't cost as much to maintain it in JP compared to hiring a new team and establishing new infrastructure to receive it localized. It could be a massive risk for SEGA to attempt to force the match to the west. The need is still, but with all these foreigners already playing the JP servers, SEGA might have become complacent and decided it was not required to try and make that push. The failure of this SEA server didn't assist with this choice, even if the cause falls upon Asiasoft's poor handling of this game.
We know that the foreign population on the JP servers is little compared to the people playing on the NA servers, but hindsight is 20/20. Talking of 2020, enter Microsoft. A number of years back, Microsoft opens Azure for gaming. While we do not know who , it's very obvious that there was an agreement between the two businesses: Microsoft can finance the PSO2 localization project in exchange for SEGA using and testing Microsoft's platform. The rest is history. SEGA did not wait because they desired to. Because I am all for that! Wait what? I thought that game funds have been stolen to fund Borderlands rather than the game I discovered, that's stupid.
That game is written off as a loss to Sega.
It is a rumor, but Jeff Gertsmann was the one who talked about it, and he's not some random. Granted, he is not super powerful in the Buy meseta pso2 gaming scene, but he is very much an experienced reporter and game reviewer, even if he isn't a journalist; he's a great deal of connections. For some time SEGA needed to concentrate just on a few key franchises in the westand it was only after SEGA of America was merged into Atlus USA in 2015 that things started to get better.