In the newest PSO Live Stream event, Sega announced new collaboration content with the Guilty Gear and Blazblue franchises, prominent fighting game IPs that belong to Arc System Works. Of course, Sega is no stranger to collaborating with franchises that aren’t in-house as far as Phantasy Star Online 2 is concerned.
However, a fun fact: Guilty Gear was owned by Sega for a couple of years following the merger of Sammy and Sega. While Arc System Works developed the Guilty Gear games, Sammy owned the IP. In any event, years later Arc System works would reclaim the IP and eventually develop the Guilty Gear Xrd series. And in the meantime, they launched another popular fighting game series called Blazblue.
Blazblue itself was party to a collaboration with Sega’s Border Break a year ago. The campaign was stylized as “BB X BB.” By visiting the respective game websites at the time of the collaboration, fans could unlock special items or treats for each game. It’s hard to figure out what prompted such a collaboration as the franchises are noticeably dissimilar, but in the end perhaps nothing gets in the way of true love.
And Sega’s history with the franchises doesn’t stop there. Chaos Heroes Online, a MOBA, was localized for Japanese gamers by Sega. In this game, Sega added additional playable characters including Sol Badguy from Guilty Gear alongside Ragna the Bloodedge and Jin Kisaragi from Blazblue. The Japanese version game also featured Alicia Melchiott and Selvaria Bles from Valkyria Chronicles as bonus characters.
The collaboration is set for August. It will feature character music, voice tickets, weapon camos, and costumes. Blazblue will feature during the early half of August, while Guilty Gear will feature in the latter half.
Blazblue is being represented by:
- Ragna the Bloodedge
- Jin Kisaragi
- Noel
- Izayoi
- Mu-12 (in a way, this means one character is being represented twice)
Guilty Gear is being represented by:
- Sol Badguy
- Ky Kiske
- May
- Millia Rage
- Elphelt (apparently popular enough to represent the series even as a franchise newcomer)
More Sega-related content featuring Shining Resonance and Takenobu Mitsuyoshi can be seen after the break!
In addition, PSO2es, the mobile version of PSO2, is receiving Shining Resonance character-themed chips. Unlike the more traditional action MMO combat of PSO2, PSO2es features battles that make use of a point-and-click system and chips are the core of this battle system. Chips featuring Yuuma, Sonia, Kirika, Rinna, and Marion are set for release at an unspecified future date.
If you remember, we previously wrote about the ARKS Festival 2015 before it took place, featuring a performance from the one and only Sega musician and voice actor Takenobu Mitsuyoshi. There’s a performance featuring an avatar of Mitsuyoshi in the ARKS lobby that can be seen below.
Information and featured image gathered from this PSUBlog entry.