It is a rumor, but Jeff Gertsmann was the one who talked about it, and he's not some arbitrary. Granted, he's not super powerful in the gambling scene, but he's very much a seasoned reporter and Phantasy Star Online 2 Meseta game reviewer, even if he is not a journalist; he's a great deal of connections. For some time SEGA had to focus just on a few key franchises in the westand it was just after SEGA of America was merged to Atlus USA at 2015 that things began to get much better.

There was no way they could have handled a massive online game like PSO2 during those years, and even following the merge, they had been occupied with not only localizing more games from more franchises they couldn't in the years before, but also they had been occupied with improving their localization process so the western releases could be nearer to the JP releases. Even today in 2020 the recent SEGA of all America/Atlus USA wouldn't have been able to deal with the entire PSO2 project by themselves (as we can see from the partnership between SEGA and Microsoft with MS hosting both the servers and community along with service being outsourced to ESTSoft).

"We heard a great deal of players say they have been waiting eight long years with this launch. [laughs] We were very happy about that." That laugh better be a nervous (oops. Sorry) one rather than a mocking one. It's in the end of a question about how hot the beta was. It reads as"lots more people played beta than expected, and informed us they had been waiting eight long years for this - so people were happy at just how popular it had been" instead of"we were happy folks were awaiting eight years" Honestly I'm just happy the game was outside, it is doing well, we're really getting content upgrades and such.

Therefore, even if they did not care we appear to be in a fine place at this time and that's what's critical. Just keep supporting and playing the game if you like it and ideally Sega will see they have a good enough player base here to not bungle things later on. What a non answer for the why the 8 year wait query. Its apparent they lost interest long ago and only changed their mind with this release because of Microsoft practically funds it. All of what has been said here makes really a great deal of sense in retrospect. The clunky translation due to buy PSO2 Meseta the group not having much control over it, and also the huge delay for the EN version. For those of you who don't remember, PS as a string has had a few really DOGSHIT customer support in the west, all the way back to PSO. Sega as a business has an extreme tendency toward the crippling fear of making cash. So they never try things unless they see an immediate gain to them in some capacity (See: POS devices in response to their incoming downfall, the quarterly surveys, etc.. )