Thanks for the link. I could have sworn they were also sold out. I have never bought anything from them before, but others have said they do not restock so I did not even try. Not feeling very CAG like at the moment but $48 shipped will not kill me. It would be interesting to know what the print run on some of these Asia English games are. I get that there are barriers to distribution, but how hard could it be to distribute these games to the rest of the world.
Publishers rarely ever state total production numbers for anything. As for distribution outside of the designated region nations, there are legal-licensing and contractual issues involved with this. We'll use Bamco (Bandai-Namco) for an example.
Bamco localizes (translates to English, Chinese, whatever) a popular anime-themed game originally developed and released in Japan. Said game contains voice acting and licensed music. Pending how the original contracts for the VAs (voice actors) and musicians were written Bamco legally must, in order to keep the voice acting and music in the game, create a new licensing contract with the VAs (Voice Actors) and the musicians allowing them to utilize their work in the game when released internationally. If either or both parties fail to negotiate a viable contract for this permissions then Bamco will have the added expense of not only translating the game's text, but may also have to cut out the recorded voice acting and licensed music. Cutting out the voice acting isn't usually a big deal since on screen text is regarded as acceptable by the majority of gamers, and if publisher/developer feels the need to do so may opt to have the voice acting re-recorded by native speakers of the language to which the game is being localized (typically English). Licensed music, if present, can be a much bigger issue as the licensed music is usually used in CG cut scenes, such as game opening and closing sequences which may additionally have voice acting mixed in.
Ultimately a lot of these decisions, especially concerning Vita titles, comes down to Sony. Sony is doing a great job of marketing the PS Vita in Japan (R2) and Southeast Asia (R3), which gives retailers, developers, and publishers market confidence in the system that the products they release stand a good shot at selling well and turning them a profit. In North America, Sony's "SCEA" (Sony Computer Entertainment America) division abandoned the PS Vita (just like they abandoned the PSP), destroying virtually all North American-based retailer, developer, and publisher confidence in the system. So most publisher's whom are still supporting the Vita with new releases in R1 are primarily Japanese-owned companies, who surely themselves must be questioning what sort of morons are running SCEA. The result though has been that while companies such as Bamco and Koei-Tecmo still release games digitally through PSN here in R1, we rarely see them muster up the confidence to do a physical release due to the entrapment of only having one national retail chain remaining that is willing to carry new releases in-store (GameStop).
