Phantasy Star: Fringes of Algo

Sega seems to be having a bit of trouble as they have canceled some upcoming games and laid off some of their staff:

http://games.yahoo.com/blogs/plugged-in ... 08678.html

This was very surprising to read. I think about every other industry has possible had troubles due to the economy or other things but the gaming industry has always seemed to be doing just fine...but maybe not!!

Well, this is terrible news for us. The chances of a release for future Phantasy Star games outside of Japan has dropped considerably now. A cancellation of the Japan releases of Phantasy Star Online 2 isn't likely, in my opinion, but we better hope that release includes alternate language selection. Anyone who wants to play it outside of Japan may be forced to connect to the servers in Japan.

I really wish Sega had outlined which games they were cancelling and if the games were cancelled completely or just in the US/Europe releases. All of the employee layoffs being mentioned online seem to be in the US/Europe branches. (I hope those folks can find new jobs soon.) If Sega is only moving to consolidate those and get more into digital publishing, the Japan branch may be largely unaffected. They could be moving to combine the US/Europe branches into one branch that handles all western releases. I can see how that would save the company money. Speaking from an outsider's perspective, I've observed a a fair amount of duplicated work being done by the two branches.

I hope things turn around for Sega during the rest of the year. So far, all the news I've heard this year about Sega outside of PSO2 has been bad news. They've lost the license for games based on Marvel Studios movies, which must have been a potentially lucrative opportunity thanks to the popularity of those movies. Sadly, the games were largely panned by critics and fans as being sub-par and didn't sell well. They've also canceled any future Sonic 4 installments after Episode II, which is not good considering that Sega lists Sonic as one of their "strong IPs" in the restructuring announcement.

Very bad nbews indeed : crisis seems to be (unfortunately) everywhere...

I'm, thinking this isn't likely to effect PSO2, but it may put an end to any hope of us getting PSP2: infinity.

Every installment of PSO, thus far, was produced and released in Japan with every language supported already selectable, save for Korean. So I'm thinking that it is very likely PSO2 will launch with English, French, German, and Spanish languages already supported. And if so, that would at least give the option for anyone interested to import a copy from Japan should no "localized" release ever materialize.

Not surprised about Sonic 4. Read somewhere a couple of months back that "Episode II" would be the final DDL release of the game as a physical copy with possibly an additional "episode" or at least some new enticing content would be coming out 4th quarter 2012 to fully milk the title for all its worth. Makes perfect sense really.

Sad news, but we could see that coming. Unfortunately, Sega hasn't been doing anything to take it out of the downwards spiral since Saturn, only reducing their operations.

On a brighter side, maybe they finally let companies like XSeed, NISA and Atlus localize the games they are not willing to bring to the west.

No, not a downward spiral since Saturn because te Dreamcast was a so fantastic machine ! For me the Dreamcast was far more better than the Saturn but that's only my humble opinion... But really sad news...

The article says Sega is going to focus more on downloadable/network and mobile games, and I wish them success there. I've been playing Sega's Fallen Realms and it's really fun. It's a basic turn-based RPG, but it's well-done and it's free. It's a part of PapayaMobile, but I've not been tempted to buy into the gimmicky side of Papaya and so far it hasn't affected my ability to play the game for free.

Downloadable/network and mobile games : just all the games I never played and will surely never play ! So...maybe one day !:)

myau56 wrote:No, not a downward spiral since Saturn because te Dreamcast was a so fantastic machine ! For me the Dreamcast was far more better than the Saturn but that's only my humble opinion... But really sad news...

Probably Saturn was more powerful compared to the game cosoles of their age (check Shenmue Saturn demo on youtube), but I was referring more to the financial/commercial part, not the technology.

Sega discontinued Dreamcast a few months after Playstation 2 hit the shelves, and before both XBox and Gamecube were released. That shows Sega was not ready to face the challenge of the 6th generation.

Ah but I was not speaking about only about games ! Not at all about marketing or power ! So we misunderstand each other ! (it's mainly my fault...) but no problem and I've already seen the saturn demo of Shenmue : truly fantastic !