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Amazon Japan suddenly begins shipping video games overseas

Casey Baseel Mar 9, 2016
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The world’s largest online retailer is now ready to give import gamers their fix.

If you’re a fan of Japanese media, it’s hard to overstate what a great place Amazon.co.jp is. The Japanese arm of online mega-retailer Amazon is always stocked with the latest anime, manga, J-pop CDs, and light novels, all being sold at their market price in Japan, free of any special importer markups.

However, there’s been one big thing keeping Amazon Japan from being the ultimate one-stop provider for Japanophile’s entertainment needs, and that’s video games. While Amazon Japan has been more than happy to ship DVDs, Blu-rays, books, and CDs internationally, until now the company hasn’t allowed orders for video games with a delivery address outside of the country. Not only has this frustrated would-be buyers of Japanese games, it’s even given anime fans headaches at times. Over the last few years, a number of Blu-rays in the Macross franchise have had mini PlayStation 3 games in their bonus content, which caused Amazon Japan to classify them as video games and reject international orders.

But it looks like this problem is going to become, for many shoppers, a thing of the past. With no fanfare from Amazon itself, Amazon.co.jp has started shipping games internationally. One of the first to notice the change was Twitter user and gamer @HadlerER.

Wow it looks like Amazon japan allows international sale for games/consoles now
I tried with a ps4 game just now and it works

— Hadler (@HadlerER) March 8, 2016

As @HadlerER goes on to clarify, this isn’t a case of certain games slipping through the cracks because they got tossed into the wrong category in Amazon.co.jp’s database. Amazon Japan seems to have simply lifted its restrictions on shipping games overseas.

However, this still doesn’t mean that the gates have been thrown open to everything listed on Amazon.co.jp. Currently, it’s only games that are directly sold by Amazon Japan that overseas shipping is allowed for. Orders that are merely fulfilled by Amazon Japan, with the actual seller being a separate entity, are still only for buyers in Japan.

Nevertheless, if Amazon Japan’s new, laxer shipping policy is here to stay, this could mark a massive change to the import gaming marketplace. It could also be the birth of a huge challenge for smaller, game-specific import companies who are unlikely to be able to match Amazon Japan’s ability to sell at lower prices and make up the difference in high volume, or to fill orders as quickly and efficiently with far less infrastructure and logistical capability than the online giant.

It’s also uncertain how the potential influx of demand will affect prices and availability of popular titles on Amazon.co.jp. So if you’ve had your eye on a Japanese game that got passed over for Western release, you might want to put that preorder in sooner rather than later.

Follow Casey on Twitter, where he sometimes reminisces about driving out to Tarzana to buy imports and other parts of gaming in the 16 and 32-bit eras.

Source: Twitter/@HadlerER, Neo GAF via Anime News Network