In the March issue of the TSO newsletter, Maxis has said that The Sims Online will be released in Japan next Saturday. Together with that announcement, they've also launched a Japanese website for TSO. This is slightly odd, as the game still has not been officially released in Europe yet. The game is considered a failure by many people, yet EA tries to gain more players this way. Japanese players will live in the same cities as all existing players. It's now possible to type in Japanese character in TSO. On another note, there's a new interview with a TSO developer (Walter Ianneo) at this page. If you want to try out the game, remember to download the free 14 day trial from FilePlanet.