At Microsoft's E3 conference today, Sega dropped a huge surprise: Phantasy Star Online 2, which has been locked to Japan and Asia for many, many years, is coming West. The MMORPG is releasing on Xbox and PC in Spring 2020. Unfortunately details are scarce. What we do know is that Phantasy Star Online 2 will be free-to-play and it will include all of the updates and content currently available in the East. So, this sounds like the English-language port people have been begging for.

Phantasy Star Online 2 has actually been out in Japan since 2012. But, for whatever reason, it never came to the U.S.. Now we’ll have access to the multiplayer online RPG and all of its post-release content. The first Phantasy Star Online came out back in 2000 for Dreamcast. Unlike its sequel, it had a timely U.S. release. In addition, Cheap Phantasy Star Online 2 Meseta is on hot sale at our website z2u.com.

In Phantasy Star Online 2, players become a member of a research expedition called Arks, a fleet of interplanetary cruising ships researching a variety of planets. Players can embark on mission quests and play in groups of 12 players. Sega initially released Phantasy Star Online 2 on PC in Japan, and later ported the game to mobile platforms, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch — but PSO2 has never come stateside, unlike its Dreamcast predecessor. The game was demoed at events like PAX in 2012, but Sega has never localized the game until now.

Phantasy Star is a series with a huge following in Asia, but it has struggled to obtain anything other than 'cult classic' status in the west. Despite launching on a number of platforms over the years, Phantasy Star Online 2 never left Japan. Fans were hopeful that PSO2 would finally come to the west following its announcement for Nintendo Switch in 2018... sadly, that never materialised.

No, it has taken a collaboration between Sega and Microsoft to make this happen. Phantasy Star Online 2 will launch on Xbox One in 'Spring 2020' and it'll be free-to-play! While this sounds like fantastic news all around, Sega has thrown a bit of cold water on the news, with the publisher taking to Twitter to reveal that an EU release is not certain.