MMOCulture reports that Phantasy Star Online 2 will operate in full service in Southeast Asia on May 29, by way of an announcement from Asiasoft. Asiasoft is the company handling operations in the chosen Southeast Asian countries, and recently conducted a closed beta for PSO2. Lucky players with beta keys will be able to access the first English servers on May 27. Asiasoft has singled out PSO2 beta session’s number of activations as the company’s highest for a regionally launched title, with 100,000 activations. They expect 300,000 more from these select countries within the game’s launch. Do keep in mind that Asiasoft community managers have expressed the company’s intentions to block foreign IP addresses, similar to Sega of Japan’s stance on their own servers.

There is still no apparent movement forward on a Western release of the game. The MMOCulture article points out some significant statistics for the game’s userbase as of early 2014: 3 million registered ID’s and a record of 107,000 concurrent playing users at once. An impressive note, and keep in mind that these numbers only represent (mostly) Japanese players or Japanese accounts. Sega certainly has confidence in the game within Asian territories, if expansion of operations and continued content are any indicator.

On April 21st Sony caused a stir when it appeared that PSP and PSOne games would be available for downloading and playing on PSVita. While this was indeed true, it was temporary and soon redacted. It is more than likely that such a change was accidental: a very unfortunate outcome as this would make the Vita an exciting purchase. This would have given people an additional means of playing games such as Valkyria Chronicles II on the PSVita. Even Shu Yoshida seemed to be fine with the development as he talked about playing the first Spyro the Dragon game.

However, this brings attention to the fact that Phantasy Star Portable 2, the last Phantasy Star game to be localized for release in the West (since the expansion game Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity was not released outside of Japan,) remains de-listed on PSN. This has been the case since at least January of 2012. When the ability to download PSP and PSOne games was available, Phantasy Star Portable 2 was an option for download, though only for those who had already downloaded the game before.

Credit to Siliconera for the image.

We learned at the end of summer of last year that Southeast Asia would be getting an English release of Phantasy Star Online 2 on PC. Southeast Asia is a region that covers Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippine Islands, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand for the purposes of this release. The English server for this game was originally planned for an early 2014 launch. As that window of time closes, we are seeing more promotional activity for this regional release.

AsiaSoft is the company handling publishing for PSO2 in Southeast Asia, and they are holding a closed beta session for the game to start at an unspecified “soon.” They have also constructed a site for their English release of PSO2. AsiaSoft is a company that has handled publishing for a variety of PC games for Southeast Asia, including Ragnarok Online, Gunbound and MapleStory. Their portfolio runs the gamut from MMORPG’s and MOBA’s to TPS’s and FPS’s.

Though a Western release is still planned, there has not been any news since SEGA’s reassurance of the game’s future release last year in September.

You can check out a cinematic trailer celebrating the incoming release of the game in Southeast Asia here.

SEGA fan and Segalization contributor SuperSonicEX captured an amazing opportunity for a Q&A with UDON Entertainment! UDON Entertainment is responsible for, among other things: translation and publishing of the three Valkyria Chronicles art books, the History of Sonic the Hedgehog, and the Eyes of Bayonetta, alongside various Hatsune Miku and Vocaloid media.

Thanks for your interest!

Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax, a fighting game featuring various characters from the Dengeki Bunko publishing label, has just released on Japanese arcades (March 18th, Japan time.) Sega developed this game themselves, and interestingly the title was developed by employees who worked on the Valkyria Chronicles series. Like Arc System Works’ Guilty Gear Xrd, it was developed on the Sega RingEdge 2 arcade board.

Seeing as the game’s concept revolves around pitting prominent Light Novel characters associated with Dengeki Bunko against each other, I think there is a surprising amount of Sega fanservice in the game and wanted to offer an opportunity to take a look at the Sega shoutouts present. A Valkyria Chronicles stage (likely Ghirlandaio) was featured amongst the first promotional screenshots for this game, and the above screenshot is clearly referencing Phantasy Star Online 2.*

There are also stages for other franchises, like the Golden Palace from Shinobi PS2, Green Hill Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog, and a NiGHTS into Dreams stage. Akira Yuki, with Pai Chan as support (almost reminds me of Project X Zone!), is a boss character and there is a temple stage from Virtua Fighter 5. Perhaps even more surprising is the appearance of Dreamcast-tan (a personified Dreamcast,) this particular design being the same one used in Samurai and Dragons. Her role here is currently unknown.

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