We recently spoke to PSO2 Meseta Yuji Nakazawa, PSO 2's North America manufacturer, about the match long-awaited arrival in the West. Polygon: Please introduce yourself and on your own words explain your role on the PSO 2 team. Yuji Nakazawa: My name is Yuji Nakazawa, and I'm a part of Sega's No. 3 development team and I am the manufacturer of the North American launch of PSO 2 -- and I functioned as the liaison with various teams to the development of the North American version. I have been off and on of the team. I started using Phantasy Star Universe at Japan and [worked on] the release of the North American Xbox version of PSU.

I'm the manager for the U.S. launch of the Xbox version as well as the Asian launch of PSO two, which was released before this U.S. version. So I'm sort of this localization specialist. Is it a relief now that PSO 2 is finally out in the West, for most of the English-speaking PSO fans who've been asking for it for ages? There is a feeling of relief [since ] there was a lot of planning that went to the development; for instance, Sega U.S. and Sega Japan took surveys in the fans about what they wanted from the match. But as an internet game, I feel the real challenge is in keeping the service going forward. In February, we had the closed beta, and there was an unusually high number of participants. We heard a great deal of players say they have been waiting eight long years for this release. So we were very happy about that.

Is this one of the reasons that the Western servers are separate in the Japanese servers? So you can roll out the later episodes at the appropriate pace, instead of ditch all the Western players onto the same servers as gamers in Asia, who have experienced all of that content already?

It is a tiny bit of both. The main reason we place it on another server for the U.S. launch was supposed to control the rolling from the tales and also due to host capacity. The simplicity of play is just one of the selling points of the game, and the distance of these servers to the players influences latency, so we knew we wanted to have the servers closer to our gamers in North America. And even though there are hardcore fans [who will play regularly and explore all the content] in the North American region, there are still many who aren't knowledgeable about the franchise, and we didn't feel it would be fair to launch eight decades' worth of articles at once. So it's a little bit of both.As that you say, PSO two did come out eight years ago, and people are wondering why it took so long between the Japanese release and the Western launch. Did it have to do with all the microtransaction system and in-game purchases being quite distinct for buy Phantasy Star Online 2 Meseta Japan?