Is this one of the reasons that the Western servers are different from the Japanese servers?

I am the director for the U.S. launch of PSO2 Meseta the Xbox version as well as the Asian launch of PSO 2, that was released prior to the U.S. version. So I am sort of this localization specialist. Is it a relief now that PSO 2 is finally from the West, for all the English-speaking PSO fans who've been asking for it for ages? There is a sense of relief [because] there was a lot of preparation that went into the development; for example, Sega U.S. and Sega Japan took surveys from the fans about what they wanted in the match. But as an internet game, I feel the real challenge is in keeping the service going forward. In February, we had the beta, and there was an unusually large number of participants. We heard a great deal of players say they've been waiting eight long years for this launch. So we were very happy about that.

Is this one of the reasons that the Western servers are different from the Japanese servers? So that you can roll out the subsequent episodes at the appropriate pace, instead of ditch all the Western players onto the very same servers as players in Asia, who've experienced all of that content already? Or did it have to do with the thought of data speeds?

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