Why is it gonna take so long for the English version of PSO2 to come out?

JustChillin posted...

False, it takes more than that. They have to scout for locations and decide if they want several locations or one centralized location and if they will have everything centralized for the rest of the international market or segregate it. Then, they have to ship it and set it up. Everything is in the planning stage, and yes it does take long. They are also likely proprietary with server OEM software that only comes from SoJ as well, so again tons of red tape to get through.
Population is another factor, they know population in the rest of the world is larger than Japan, but they may not know how many servers they will need and they certainly don't want to get way more than needed.
Again, all planning stages, they certainly don't do everything in a single day.
Next, they have to decide who they want running the servers, do they hire more? Or do they send people over? Or do they make a deal with another company to handle the affairs?

Translation will take time, since they have so much text embedded into the server, they'd have to embed everything slowly and also run tests of the servers to make sure it is sending the proper text. This isn't done in a day, don't be silly.

VA can take a ridiculously long time, simply because of the guilds and other contracts and of course, time for the VAs. Sega could set up an appointment now and it may take them two months to get that desired VA, and they likely may be shopping around for one which make take weeks as well. It isn't as simple as seiyuu in Japan.
Then, they have to test the voice tracks and ensure they work properly and edit them and that takes time as well. No, definitely not 9 months per thing, but over time yes it can take 9 months.

When all they have to do to appeal to the Western audience that gives even the slightest **** about PSO is translate the menu and server-side text via a language option and add subtitles to the cutscenes (things that even a small subset of the fan community have proven they can do in weeks, for free, through reverse-engineering and without any official support), all of that seems like a lot of wasted time, money, and effort.

Same thing with the international release; they already accept clearly non-Japanese credit card info for the cash shop, the servers and bandwidth appear to be sufficient (except for the population issues on the first few Ships, solvable by buying a handful of additional servers i.e. what they're already doing for intl. release anyway only this way they can keep it all in Japan with the rest) and lag hasn't been a problem, so I don't understand why there appears to exist this need for this whole rigmarole.

I mean yeah there will always be That One Guy who can't stand to play anything online with worse than 20ms ping (in all fairness I'm That One Guy for competitive shooters but even then I don't like them, so eh) who will demand a local server, but **** That One Guy, he's not the target nor main audience nor even a respectable minority.



In summary: PSO2 international release could be handled by adding Language options to the existing client and servers, subtitles for cutscenes (aka indistinguishable from Language option), and adding a few servers. So basically a few months of work for a small team already within the company and minimal bottom-line expenditure.


Instead they'll hand it off to local branches (such as SoA) at great expense, it will put forth a mediocre performance, then the proven track record of poor decisions and lack of support from SoA will cause the game to bomb. Then we'll continue to be unable to have nice things because SoJ and SoA are incapable of pattern recognition.
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Don't get hit and hit it until it dies, in that order.
Kill it, carve it, wear it, repeat it.

That all said, I'm not complaining about the time issue, I just find it weird and inefficient.
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Don't get hit and hit it until it dies, in that order.
Kill it, carve it, wear it, repeat it.