Phantasy Star's universal issues

The Phantasy Star Universe demo is now available on Xbox Live as part of the beta (it went up yesterday), but you'd be hard-pressed to tell. After a 954 MB download, we were treated to failed connection messages over and over for upwards of an hour. A quick glance at the PSU beta forum suggests that this problem is rather widespread.

The amount of time the PSU beta would be available has been constantly diminishing, marred by a series of problems. Let's recap:

1. The beta is announced as being up for download Oct 11 and 12 and then open to play until October 18. That gives us at most an entire week of gaming.
2. Near the eleventh hour, Sega announced that the download would be delayed, but promised within a few days. The download then comes available this weekend, but still only lasts until October 18. Two less days to enjoy PSU.
3. Xbox Live announces that they will be down for maintenance October 17th for up to 24 hours. That's another day we can scratch off.
4. Server issues plague the PSU beta. Time to find another way to spend the weekend.

We're hoping Sega gets the issue straight soon. Even if the beta turns out to be a bust, internet troubles now are a bad sign for the official Phantasy Star Universe release, which is just 10 days away. Any Joystiq readers had any luck with the beta?

Continue reading for our entire PSU experience thus far, summed up in two screenshots.