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Comment on Why is the US receiving the short end for OoT pre-order bonuses?

NutinButNet@hilariouschaos.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

Japan getting bonuses has been a thing for a long time and not exclusive to video games. I remember having to use less than legal ways to get exclusive songs off CD releases from some of my favorite musical artists because only Japan got those exclusives. And they didn’t hide it either. The CD literally said “Japanese exclusive”.

The only reason I’ve found is that it’s to encourage Japanese customers to buy the merchandise in their region and not buy outside of it. I’ve heard it had to do with a weaker currency’s valuation in the Yen and so giving them exclusives made it less likely they’d buy from another country to save cash by getting the exact same product. That’s also partly why region locks are a thing to prevent people from buying in a cheaper region.

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evujumenuk@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
This may have been the case once.

Nowadays, buying from Japan as an outsider is in many cases a great way to save money, and has been for a few gears now thanks to the, uh, interesting monetary policy coming from the Bank of Japan.

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- NutinButNet@hilariouschaos.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  What is that policy? I’m not familiar with that.
  
  Yeah, I’ve heard that before like the Switch 2 being cheaper than the US and the used market is much much cheaper in price and quality than the US for consoles and games.
  
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  - baines@lemmy.cafe ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    go broke on the international exchange
    
    tied to an aging population and declining tech advantage (read gone)
    
    1. The Currency “Collapse” on the International Exchange
    
    The Japanese Yen has faced a historic decline, dropping past 160 to nearly 180 Yen per USD. [1, 2]
    
    The Debt Trap: Japan’s public debt sits at a staggering 240%+ of GDP. To stop the government from going broke under the weight of interest payments, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) has historically had to suppress bond yields. [1, 2]
    
    The Exchange Rate Penalty: Because the BOJ keeps domestic interest rates artificially low (around 1%) while global central banks (like the US Federal Reserve) keep rates much higher, investors relentlessly dump the Yen to buy Dollars. Massive, multi-billion-dollar government currency interventions have repeatedly failed to save the Yen because they treat the symptom rather than the underlying fiscal debt. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
    
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