The recently-announced Steam version of Phantasy Star Online 2 has been released, and it's already managing to attract plenty of players. The game has been free on every platform it's been on, but the numbers show that plenty of players were waiting for it to land on Steam.
Originally launching in Japan back in 2012, Phantasy Star Online 2 is a free action-MMORPG and sequel to the original Phantasy Star Online, and many English players have been looking forward to it being localized in English. As PCGamesN reports, the Steam version of the game hasn't been out for over a week and already has a peak simultaneous player count of 18,807, which is pretty impressive for a game that's nearly a decade old. For comparison, Star Wars: The Old Republic, another free MMORPG on Steam, launched back in July and quickly hit a peak of 34,210 concurrent players.
Phantasy Star Online 2 first saw an English PC release back in May on the Microsoft Store, but that version faced a variety of problems and glitches. Fortunately, those problems have been mostly fixed, and those who don't want to play on the Microsoft Store can choose to play their game on Steam or the Xbox One, which got Phantasy Star Online 2 a few months before the Microsoft Store, instead. Players who use the Steam version also have access to a variety of unique cosmetics themed around some of Valve's biggest games, including Half-Life, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, and Portal.
Phantasy Star Online 2 is available now for PC and Xbox One.
Source: PCGamesN