Earlier this morning, at around 2 AM EDT, Sony’s Tokyo Game Show press conference took place. SCEJA chose to stream the conference in both Japanese and English, meaning that some of these announcements could indeed be relevant to Western audiences. We’ll be covering the key titles announced during this press conference as we brush the sleep from our eyes, but I’ll get one out of the way right now.
SEGA has announced Phantasy Star Nova for the PlayStation Vita, a new game set in the same universe as Phantasy Star Online 2. Phantasy Star Nova can be played offline, and it will be sold in stores, unlike PSO2. Players can enjoy the game’s offline mode or jump online for four-player co-op via ad-hoc play.
tri-Ace will be developing Phantasy Star Nova. For those unfamiliar, this is the development team behind games like Star Ocean (and its many sequels), Valkyrie Profile, and Radiata Stories. This is all we know so far beyond the small bits of footage shown during the press conference.
So…will this be released in the West? If there’s one thing fans in North America and Europe are painfully aware of, it’s that news of Phantasy Star Online 2’s Western release has been…sparse, to say the least, since it was announced for localization last year. Methinks we’ll have to get one before we get the other, but…I’ve certainly been wrong before.
…At least the Vita is region-free! The game is set to release in Japan sometime in 2014.
