Now, to complete our series, we turn our focus to PSO2 Meseta2, which came in the West two decades after the launch of the Dreamcast original -- and eight long years following PSO 2's launch in Japan. Western audiences frequently wondered whether the game would come to North America at all, however Phantasy Star Online 2 is now available from the West on Xbox One and Windows PC. Additionally, Sega has announced a brand new, open-world PSO 2 update called New Genesis, due out in 2021. This update is being published instead of a brand new episode to bring the 8-year-old movie engine up to date, worldwide. Details on New Genesis are mild at the moment, but Sega says it will reveal more in the Tokyo Game Show timeframe after this year.
We recently spoke to Yuji Nakazawa, PSO two North America manufacturer, in regards to the game's long-awaited coming in the West. Polygon: Please introduce yourself and on your own words describe your role on the PSO two team. Yuji Nakazawa: My name is Yuji Nakazawa, and I am part of Sega's No. 3 development team and I'm the manufacturer of the North American release of PSO two -- and I worked as the liaison with various teams for the development of the North American Edition. I've been off and on of this team. I started using Phantasy Star Universe at Japan and [functioned on] the release of this North American Xbox version of PSU.
I am the manager for the U.S. release of the Xbox version in addition to the Asian release of PSO two, that was released before this U.S. version. So I'm sort of this localization specialist. Is it a relief now that PSO two is finally from the West, for all the English-speaking PSO fans who have been asking for this for years? There's a feeling of relief [because] there was lots of planning that went to the development; for instance, Sega U.S. and Sega Japan took surveys from the fans about what they wanted in the game. However, as an online game, I believe the real challenge will be in keeping the service moving forward. So in February, we had the beta, and there was an unexpectedly high number of participants. We heard a great deal of players say they've been waiting eight long years with this release. So we were really happy about that.
Is this one of the reasons that the Western servers are separate from the Japanese servers? So that you can roll out the subsequent episodes in the right pace, rather than dump all of the Western players onto the very same servers as players in Asia, who've experienced all of that content already? Or did it have to do with the thought of data rates?
It's a little bit of either. The main reason why we put it on a different server for the U.S. launch was to restrain the rolling out of their stories and due to server capacity. The ease of play is just one of the selling points of this sport, and the distance of these servers into the players influences latency, so we knew we wanted to have the servers closer to our players in North America. And although there are hardcore fans [who'll play regularly and explore all of the content] in the North American area, there are many who are not knowledgeable about the franchise, and we did not feel it would be reasonable to launch eight years' worth of articles at the same time. So it's a little bit of both.As you state, PSO two did come out eight decades ago, and people are wondering why it took so long between the Japanese release and the Western release. Can it have to cheap meseta pso2 do with all the microtransaction system and in-game purchases being very different for Japan?