That game is written off Phantasy Star Online 2 Meseta as a reduction to Sega. It's a rumor, however, Jeff Gertsmann was the person who talked about it, and he's not a random. Granted, he's not super influential in the gaming arena, but he is very much a seasoned reporter and match reviewer, even though he isn't a journalist; he's a lot of connections. Not long after the announcement of PSO2 to its west back in 2012, alot of downsizing happened for the western branches of SEGA, especially SEGA of America. For a while SEGA had to concentrate only on a few key franchises at the westand it was only after SEGA of America was merged to Atlus USA in 2015 that things began to get better.

There was no way they might have managed a huge online game like PSO2 during those years, and even following the merge, they had been busy with not just localizing more games from more franchises they couldn't in the years before, but also they had been occupied with enhancing their localization procedure so the western releases could be closer to the JP releases. Even today in 2020 the recent SEGA of America/Atlus USA would not have been able to deal with the whole PSO2 job independently (as we can see by the partnership between SEGA and Microsoft with MS hosting the servers and community and service being outsourced to ESTSoft).

"We heard a great deal of players say they have been waiting eight long years for this release. [laughs] So we were really happy about that." That laugh be a nervous (oops. Sorry) one rather than a one. It's in the end of a question about how hot the beta was. It reads as"a lot more people played beta than anticipated, and told me they had been waiting eight long years with this - so we were pleased at just how hot it was" instead of"we had been happy folks were waiting for eight years" Frankly I'm just glad the game is out, it is doing well, we're really getting content upgrades and such.

So even if they did not care we seem to maintain an ok spot right now and that's what's important. Just continue supporting and playing the game if you like it and Sega will see they have a decent enough player base to not bungle items later on. What a non answer for the why the 8 year delay question. Its apparent they lost interest and just changed their mind with this release because of Microsoft practically funds it. All of what has been said here makes really a lot of sense in retrospect. The clunky translation on account of the group not having much control on it, and also the huge delay for the EN version. For all those of you who don't remember, PS as a string has had some really DOGSHIT customer service at the west, all the way back to PSO. Sega as a company has an extreme tendency toward the crippling fear of earning cash.

Gotta love how that dude's encounter is gatchas along with the SEA fiasco, which makes me feel comfortable with the game's future... SEGA simply don't like the west, and we would have never gotten this game if not for a major firm like MS. I do not know whether it is because of bad history with cheaters from PSO /PSU, or even sore over the Dreamcast's demise that pso2 sales was all thier own fault. They arent even Sega anymore, they are Sega Sammy.