Octopath Traveler is in high demand in Japan. So much so that the game has a deep shortage at many retail stores. This all has led to Square Enix to issue an apology to Japanese fans on twitter over the weekend.
品薄の状況が続き申し訳ありません。
十分な数をお届けできるよう鋭意生産のうえ出荷をしてまいりますが、
直近の出荷数については、まだかなり少数になってしまう見込みです。
お待たせして大変申し訳ありません。よろしければダウンロード版もご検討いただければと存じます。#オクトパストラベラー— オクトパストラベラー公式 (@OCTOPATH_PR) July 20, 2018
The tweet roughly translates to :
“Sorry for the scarce situation. We will continue to ship the product in full order to deliver a sufficient number, but the most recent shipments are expected to become a fairly small number yet. I am very sorry to have kept you waiting. I hope you will consider the download version if you like.”
Add to that there are also reports that physical stocks of the game ran out at popular technology store Yodobashi Camera in three hours across Japan.
It is fascinating to see that in Japan, Octopath Traveler is having shortages of physical copies. It shows how popular the JRPG genre still is in the east. On top of that this hints that digital downloads of games are not catching on or at least isn’t as popular. However, it is worth taking into account that fan culture in Japan is vastly different to the west. This could just be in fact proof that fans want to collect a physical edition to support the franchise and doesn’t really indicate anything beyond that. We can’t see whether this means that people don’t download games at all in Japan or that JRPGs are extremely popular, but just that there is high demand for physical copies.
But what do you think? Does this mean that JRPGS are still extremely popular? Or that people don’t download games in Japan? Or that people just like purchasing games physically on top of digital purchases in Japan? Sound off in the comments below!
