“ Naka decided in opposition to creating a massively multiplayer recreation similar to
Ultima Online and EverQuest, which might handle many players simultaneously in a persistent world; the necessary servers would have required two
years of programming, and the Dreamcast did not have a hard disk drive to assist steady
online patches. They saw the creation of an online recreation for Japan, a nation of console gamers,
as a critical challenge, akin to creating a new genre. Sega
chairman Isao Okawa believed the internet was the way forward for gaming and needed a flagship on-line
sport for Sega's Dreamcast console. Phantasy Star Online is
an motion function-playing recreation primarily played with different gamers cooperatively over the web.
Sonic Team ran experiments with totally different internet service providers, dial-up modems, cable modems, and different networking configurations to ensure the sport would work for all gamers.
As Japanese internet service suppliers charged for dial-up access per minute, and excessive-pace connections were not yet extensively accessible,
Okawa personally paid without cost web entry bundled with Japanese Dreamcasts. ”