Man, I would love to know how successful Spiral Knights has been for Sega. As their first big free to play title, I also found that it was incredibly annoying the way they structured the pay content. For anyone not familiar, you essentially had to pay to get to play more than an hour or so pre day. If one of PSO's items is something required to go out on missions or something, that'll be just as bad.Phantasy Star Online 2 isn't exactly the Dreamcast-era throwback we expected. Sega is embracing the future for its pricing model -- the infinitely expensive, vaguely annoying future. Sega announced a free-to-download, free-to-play model for the PC/Vita online action RPG during a streaming media event this morning. Revenue will come from item transactions.
Sega also announced a version of the game for iOS and Android. This won't exactly be the full game; according to Andriasang, Sega promised "social game elements," and simpler controls and character creation. Data will be shared between the phone and PC/Vita versions, but crossplay will not be possible. This version is due winter 2012, between the summer PC release and the 2013 Vita release.
But other than that wrinkle, I'm very interested to see how this shapes up. People more in the know about PSO than I have been digging all the latest media they've released. Now to hope this will come over here at some point.
