Sega announced in their media briefing for Phantasy Star Online 2 yesterday that the game will be free to play, additionally there will be a smartphone port of some sort. Hit the jump for a video of the briefing as well as the summary of what we know so far.
Famitsu have also released an article covering the release. I won’t translate the whole thing, but here are the main points:
- The game is free to play, but players will have to pay real money for certain items
- Players on the PS Vita version of the game will be able to play with people on the PC version.
- PSO2 will also be released for mobile phones, iOS and Android. While the smartphone version is cross compatible with the Vita and PC versions, it seems to be a more cut back version, only allowing single player.
- PC version is due sometime in Summer 2012 (July-September), the smartphone version in Winter 2012, and the Vita version in Spring 2013.
- It looks like the crazy symbol chats of PSO1 will be making a return.
- You can sign up for the Beta test which will run in April sometime, at the official site here. It seems to use the SEGA ID system, if I figure out how to sign up, I’ll post the details here. Signups close 16th April.
- A character creation demo will be released on April 5th, this allows you to test out the character creation part, and if you are playing in the Beta test, this can be ported over to the Beta.
You can find more images at the Famitsu article.
