Phantasy Star Online 2 Confirms Spring Release Date for PC

A lot of Xbox players have been enjoying everything PSO2 has to offer since the game went into Open Beta. While I don’t have an Xbox personally, because at the end of the day a PC, Playstation and a Switch are more than enough to satiate my gaming needs, I’m well aware how much fun the game can be.
And I know that a lot of you were disappointed when it was announced to be coming to the Xbox before PC – with some players going as far as hearing the words “Xbox” and assuming it’s going to be an Xbox exclusive.

If you recall though, it was announced that the game would be releasing initially on Xbox consoles in Spring, with a PC release to follow at a later date sometime further through the year.
However, in a reply to a Tweet a couple days ago, the PSO2 Twitter went on to state that “everything is still on track for the PC release, we just haven’t announced the dates yet.”
They further mentioned that “the PC version is still coming this Spring,” in North America, Spring beginning March 19th – yeah, we’re almost a month through Spring currently.
So while they can’t give an exact date as to when the game will launch onto PC, it is still 100% confirmed to be releasing within the next 2 months.
That’s appreciated a lot more than leaving us with “We’re working on it.”
In my opinion, the sooner it hits PC the better. While we’re all eagerly anticipating the game, now is the opportune moment to garner as much interest in the game as possible. Everyone is home.
Everyone is scrambling to find games to play. MMOs are some of the most addicting, and PSO2 is tiers above a lot of free-to-play MMOs. So right now, while everyone has a surplus of free time would be the ideal time to release.
But that’s unlikely unfortunately.

A question I have seen asked repeatedly is whether or not PSO2 will be launching via the Microsoft Store or Steam? Well, my question is why not both? Microsoft stated last year that new games would be launching on both Steam and the Windows Store.
This is to ensure that they make as much profit as they possibly can. They’ve already begun to move games over to Steam and I have absolutely no doubt that this will roll out onto Steam at one point as well. Maybe not necessarily initially.
Maybe at first it’ll be a Microsoft Store exclusive, but they’d be hindering the release if they didn’t cater to Steam players as well.
While I don’t doubt it’ll be available via Steam, don’t take this as me officially confirming a Steam release.

So I bet you’re now pondering the question: “When the game finally launches in the next 2 months.. will it be a Global release?” Great question, thanks for asking! The launch of the game is global.
There are, as far as I’m aware, no IP restrictions currently in place. However the servers that you play off of are all located within North America.
Worth noting is the fact that only the lobby makes use of Microsoft’s servers. Once you leave the lobby and you embark on missions you’ll find that the game actually utilizes a peer to peer system, connecting you without lag to people within your region.
This will prevent any ping-related issues that prevent you from playing the game as if it were hosted on servers within your own region. I had no idea they actually did this in the game but I always wondered why my ping was as low as it was.
Even playing the Japanese version of the game I’d never experienced any ping-related problems and I don’t expect anyone to once this launches onto PC globally either.

Phantasy Star Online 2 is an incredibly fun MMO.
I’ve dedicated too many hours to the Japanese version of the game to count, and I’m definitely looking forward to getting this game in May or June. Hopefully the former, honestly, but if it’s the latter.. then I have plenty of games to play anyway.
It’s still one of the better Anime MMO’s I’ve had the pleasure of playing. While yeah, it features a lobby along with instanced missions, the game is one of my 10 favorite MMO of all time.
Admittedly, there was some content I never fully grasped with the English-translation for the Japanese version of the game, and I look forward to finally learning what that was.

Until then, I do want to ask: For those of you playing the game on the XBox, what’re your thoughts? Are you enjoying the game? What do you think could be improved, and for those of you that didn’t like the game, why is that?
I know there are some minor changes made from the Japanese version but I’m curious how those were received overall.