If you scroll back a few months of posts – which isn’t that many posts, embarrassingly enough – you’ll come to a post of mine from September 2022 where I made fun of myself for completing the first Season Pass in Chrono Circle, since it was a bit of a grind to unlock cosmetics that would be completely useless as soon as the game went end-of-service.

Well, it’s been a little over two years and they are finally winding it down.  I am not claiming any particular power of prophecy here.  This is the normal cycle of life for any arcade rhythm game.

Surprisingly, it’s getting a full year of online service before moving to offline move in January of 2025, at which point you’ll still be able to play most of the game’s songs.  You just won’t be able to keep records or compete with other people for scores.

It is unclear at this time whether you will be able to set your note sounds so I may not be able to torture nearby people with the non-stop meowing of the kitty cat sound bank any more.

Basically, it’s a graceful sunsetting and I’m glad that I got to be there for the entire ride.  The local Round1 still has Wacca and Maimai machines, so I expect the Chrono Circle cab will stay on the floor for a while even after it moves to offline.  With any luck, I’ll find a new borderline-exercise game to play before that cab gets boxed up and sold to some collector under the table.

And then there’s Love Live: School Idol Festival 2, the sequel to and replacement for both Love Live: School Idol Festival and Love Live: All Stars.  That finally had its global launch announced just about a week ago, which would normally be a cause for rejoicing BUT…

In the same tweet, they announced that it would also be closing on May 31.  I can’t be certain that this has never been done before, but it’s certainly the first time I’ve ever known a game’s end of service before the servers are even online to play.

Despite that, I did download it when it launched, and spent a happy hour or so confirming that it was, yes, basically the same nine-button rhythm game that I spent years addicted to.  It’s a little shinier, maybe, but not hugely so.

Impressively, even with the expiration date well-known in advance, they are still happily selling you very expensive packs of premium currency that you could use to pull for trading card representations of your favorite Love Live characters.  That’s a level of chutzpah that gives me an excuse to use the word “chutzpah” and I gotta hand it to them for that.

I have to assume that somewhere there is a very strict contract that promised harsh penalties if the global version never launched and that this is the sole reason we’re getting it at all.

The replacement for LLSIF2 in Japan seems to be a sort of  “stalk your favorite idols” app where you do stuff like watch virtual live streams of your favorite virtual idols and read virtual social media posts and … honestly I’m not entirely sure of the appeal if you’re not super into parasocial relationships with anime girls.  There’s a game buried in it as well but it’s some sort of weird card thing rather than a rhythm game.

Anyway, I think the only Love Live game that will still be available outside of Japan is the PS4 game which I’ve never gotten into.  It is at least a proper rhythm game and now I guess I have a reason to check it out.  Calling it right now, they will find a way to kill it within three months of me doing do.