The announcement of Phantasy Star Online 2 for the West caught everyone by surprise. After so much time, many people no longer believed the game would be released on this side of the world, but during Microsoft's E3 2019 conference, it was announced that the game would finally be released in English in 2020 for Xbox One and Windows 10.
The part of the news that did not please everyone was that the game would apparently come to consoles only on Xbox One, while in Japan it also has versions for PlayStation 4, PS Vita, and Switch. Since the announcement was made at Microsoft's E3 conference and, according to the trailer, the game would use Microsoft's Azure cloud service, people concluded that Microsoft was probably funding the servers and the game's localization, hence the Xbox One exclusivity.
However, according to Phil Spencer, the "head of the Xbox brand," the game will also come to other platforms.
At 37:36 in the video, the interviewer begins speaking with Spencer about Phantasy Star Online 2, and Spencer also celebrates the game's arrival in the West. He says SEGA is responsible for managing the game and comments on the many innovations the first PSO brought to gaming and his belief that it is an important franchise for the market. He also says he visited Japan and spoke to the PSO2 team about what they could do to help bring the game over. He then comments that he does not know whether it will be possible to transfer a character from the Japanese version to the American one, since that is SEGA's decision.
But the most interesting part comes at 40:36, when Spencer says, in a free translation:
It was really cool to have them [SEGA] on our stage and be able to work with them. Yes, the game will eventually appear on every platform. That is not the point. For me, the point was being able to have SEGA back on our stage, [which] had not happened in a while, and with a franchise that I think can be relevant. I think it can be a franchise that people discover and think, 'Wow, I did not know something like this existed.'
According to Spencer's words, it appears that Microsoft helped bring the game over—though it was not clear whether he meant bringing it to the West, to Xbox, or both—but the Xbox One exclusivity is only temporary and the game will also come to "every platform." Which ones remain to be seen. PlayStation 4 is almost certain, but personally, I do not believe the PS Vita version will come to the West, since production of the handheld has already ended. The Switch version in Japan runs entirely through the cloud, with streaming rather than a direct port, which could also complicate matters for the console. Other games that received Switch versions using the same model, such as Resident Evil 7, did not come to the West, perhaps because our internet is not as good as what people have in Japan.
In addition, we still do not know whether the Western version of the game will be played through a download or whether it will run through Azure in the cloud. The previously released game trailer also mentions cross-play, which should mean that players on any platform will be able to play together, as in the Japanese version. Only time will answer these and other questions.
