| Mail |

You might also like: WoW Insider, Massively, and more

More Sites You Might Like

PC, PS2 Phantasy Star Universe servers closing March 31

by JC Fletcher on Jan 26th 2010 12:00AM

"Who said we are lost again in this lonely world?" That's the first line of the somewhat hokey but infectious theme song to Phantasy Star Universe. When the song was written, that was a rhetorical question, but now it's been answered: Sega says you're lost in this lonely world. At least, that's the message the publisher is sending the remaining players of the PS2 and PC versions, whose servers will be shut down soon.

Following the January 29 "Maximum Attack G+" event, Sega will convert everyone's account to a free account, and allow the players to enjoy what time they can before the servers shut off on March 31. This won't affect the Xbox 360 version in any way other than the flood of refugees from other platforms.

It may not be much of a flood, however: GM Edward@Sega said that the shutdown is taking place because "[t]he population is simply too low for us to be able to continue to support this platform."

[Via Massively]

Source

Tags: Microsoft, phantasy-star, phantasy-star-universe, sega, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (26)

This is pretty sweet news for me. I never like they paying to play games I already bought idea, and this means that maybe sega will allow PSU to be hosted and put up for free like PSO/Blue Burst.

I wonder how empty it must be on those servers. I would feel so lonely playing an MMO and not seeing any one for hours.

Maybe it's shutting down because the "actual players" to "SEND PICS FOR 5 MIL MESETA" ratio is 1:50

Well, the dreams over.
Shut her down boys!

And the reason people abandoned those versions is because, unlike 360, there's no protection on the saves. Exploits and hacked characters are the norm.

Goodbye you piece of...of..well waste of a Phantasy star name!

The game wasn't that bad it was just... a console MMO.

That said, although I know it will never happen, I would love to see Sega revive the series as a proper RPG with production values on-par with the Final Fantasy series. THAT I'm sure we can all agree would be a good use of the Phantasy Star name.

I just wasn't PSO episode 1 & 2.. they just have to put it on XBLA, run it off MS's servers.. or maybe it's just the sort of thing to stay as fond memories...

platformS

It's a direct quote. You'll need to head over to sega's forums and correct Edward@Sega, an admin over there. I warn you though, that's the least of his grammatical trespasses.

Hmm... this was meant to be a reply.

I wish sega would stop jerking around and finally give us a Phantasy Star V. I mean PSO was cool during the dreamcast days and I had a bit of fun with some friends but I'm hankering for a tired and true Phantasy Star game.

Chop Chop make my wish come true sega

I remember the item dupe shop trick from PSO Episodes 1 & 2 on Gamecube. I'm not sure if the trick was in place on the Dreamcast versions or not, but it basically ruined the economy in the game.

Rather than trying to find rare item drops from monsters & bosses, people would drop them everywhere & give them away for free.

I absolutely LOVE(D) PSO! It was probably my most played Gamecube game. I remember buying the game & the modem adapter (yes modem for dialup). Yeah it was $8.95 a month, but it was so worth it. The holiday quests were amazing. Halloween, Thanksgiving, etc. Not to mention the Nights quests that were thrown in.

It was definitely there in the Dreamcast as well, only that the way to do it was with disconnecting, while on the Gamecube, you could do it with the Action Replay disc much easier. So the situation got much worse on GC.

It's always a sad time to always here when servers are getting shut down, no matter what game it is or their quality. Tabula Rusa and The Matrix Online are 2 examples.

Man, what happened with this game? It just didn't have the fun the ol ep 1 and 2 had. Seriously, no MMO has had a system like that for me since. I like the wow game and all, but just clicking and watching a hack fest gets boring, I need the little bit of strategy that pso had. oh well, heres hoping someone will bring it back in a hack n slash n level up kind a way.

I played the DC and GC versions of PSO and loved every minute of it, although PSU just didn't have that charm. If you're looking for something, somewhat similar and good, I recommend Borderlands. It's not the same, definitely not the same, but still pretty good.

I love playing PSU on Xbox Live. I used to play Phantasy Star Online on the Dreamcast then the Xbox, and I still likeed PSU. I'm glad they're not shutting down the Xbox servers yet. I'm going to start my account again either this or next week. I'm excited! Woo!

I wonder how many people are playing the Xbox 360 version..

Hopefully Sega's still-under-wraps 2D Sonic game will be only the first in a return to the kind of stuff that made them the console leader they used to be. We desperately need another turn and story-based Phantasy Star (and ditch online COMPLETELY; I WANT EFFORT PUT INTO THE SINGLE-PLAYER GAME!!!!), along with another TRUE Shining Force (meaning turn-based tactical) and a ton of other great side-scrolling shooters, platformers, and racers we haven't seen from Sega in years or even decades. Here's hoping, anyway.

There was nothing all that wrong with the multiplayer concept in PSU - it just didn't need to be global-persistent. If they had simply let players host their own little parties in a free-form mission environment, maybe with some paid DLC to freshen things up once in a while, it would have been a huge hit.

The Dreamcast PS was the best one and it was FREE to play. I am curious to know how many people actually still play this game.

Didn't you had to pay for Sega Net in order to play online?

SegaNet was Sega's branded ISP gaming service basically, that guarenteed priority dialup traffic to servers and offered a supposedly more stable connection to games. However, you could play all dreamcast online games with any ISP, you just enter your dialup info (or lan info, if you had a broadband adaptor for it). into the game (or into the web browser) and you were set to go. PSO version 1 was free to play, version 2 did require a monthly fee, but that was not limited to SegaNet subscribers, I myself had ATT Worldnet at the time, and they really did a good job with the netcode on those DC games, UT99 was basically lag free, PSO never had issues really, and amazingly, the first console game with built in voice chat, Alien Front Online, was lag free despite doing VIOP over dialup during gameplay with a dozen or so players on each server.

When sega closed phantasy star online ep 1 and 2 servers on every platform Online play was still available through illegal means. the only thing wrong was there was no more holiday rappies to rafoie

Don't forget the equally infectious theme song for the expansion, a reprisal on the originals version

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0XlR6LdLzw&feature=related

Sad to hear it's going down, I wonder if I still have my copy around here..

Breaking News

Phantasy Star Universe

PC, PS2 Phantasy Star Universe servers closing March 31

Reader Comments (26)

Posted: Jan 26th 2010 12:03AM Rhamsey said

Posted: Jan 26th 2010 12:06AM Coffey said

Posted: Jan 26th 2010 12:13AM YimYimYimi said

Posted: Jan 26th 2010 12:25AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 26th 2010 12:33AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 26th 2010 12:37AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 26th 2010 12:56AM AoE said

Posted: Jan 26th 2010 1:17AM Mazrael said

Posted: Jan 26th 2010 12:38AM Rasec said

Posted: Jan 26th 2010 12:59AM AoE said

Posted: Jan 26th 2010 1:00AM AoE said

Posted: Jan 26th 2010 1:05AM Stevetrop Man of Mystery said

Posted: Jan 26th 2010 2:05AM Gate Stormer said

Posted: Jan 26th 2010 3:59AM War Machine said

Posted: Jan 26th 2010 2:13AM Admiral White said

Posted: Jan 26th 2010 2:39AM tkashur said

Posted: Jan 26th 2010 3:56AM War Machine said

Posted: Jan 26th 2010 4:12AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 26th 2010 6:00AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 26th 2010 8:16AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 26th 2010 8:39AM erwos said

Posted: Jan 26th 2010 9:33AM shimrra74 said

Posted: Jan 26th 2010 12:50PM GreenElf said

Posted: Jan 26th 2010 1:55PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 26th 2010 1:00PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 26th 2010 3:11PM asymptotic said

Phantasy Star Universe Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

WB conjures up Harry Potter for Kinect this fall

Featured Stories

Silver Lining: I Am Alive's unfeeling world

Game Of Thrones and the paradoxes of adaptation

Super Joystiq Podcast 004: 38 Studios meltdown, Gravity Rush, Civilization 5: Gods & Kings, Dragon's Dogma

Engadget

TUAW

Massively

WoW