I finally got me a Nintendo Switch (long story which I’ll spare you this time), and although I already own TWP on Steam since several years I was curious how the store front for TWP on the Switch Store looks like.
So turned out there is no TWP in Japanese Switch Store. Somehow clicking through the TWP home page I was able to wishlist the game using my account, but opening the wish list there’s just a question mark in place for the TWP in it (or so I assume)
Is this how it works, are most games, TWP included, region locked to some specific country stores?
We did nothing to region lock it. There are lots of odd rules for being on the Japanese store having to do with the publisher has to have an office in Japan (we don’t). But that might just be Sony… I honestly don’t remember, but we don’t specifically region lock the game.
According to my knowledge Switch doesn’t really use region locks at all. You should be able to purchase TWP in a store from another region and play it with accounts in any region.
Disclaimer: I own only one Switch game on an SD-card thingy. And no Switch
However, to be sure: send it to me so I can test it
Just search it on any other country store, then. I tried looking for it on the Japanese store - but couldn’t since it uses Japanese characters
I have to say, the game page for TWP looks much better than most - even bigger- titles out there who barely put a description or more than a single screenshot!
Coming from GOG and even Steam, the nintendo store is really bad in helping you decide if you want to spend your money on a game, browsing through deals…
Nintendo divides the world in three sales regions: Americas, EMEA and Asia.
You can easily switch countries by first looking for the game and then selecting another country.
The US version of the game page actually looks quite different. Its adverted file size is less than a Gb, while the EU version is 1.4Gb
@RonGilbert, it seems the whole APAC region has no TWP at all. I tried to find the Japanese store by going through the Australian one, but the query turned out empty.
For big titles, yes. But for most indie games, anything beyond a title screen is a stretch.
The biggest annoyance is you need to search on your favorite search engine for reviews anyway (so you might as well look up the game description, gameplay, screenshots, videos…).
The convenience of gog and steam and others is that you don’t have to leave the store to get that information, which leads to more purchases (in my case, at least).
I guess maybe it would work if I signed out, and somehow created an account in another region. That would maybe work if it would be possible to also complete payments, which is a tricky thing at least for iTunes where you end up having to ask someone to buy iTunes point cards for you in said country, or you’re out of luck. I guess it’s the same thing with Nintendo store. The best thing would be if content owners would just make contents available everywhere.
Yes.
However, it seems you can legally buy from any Nintendo e-store in the world. All you need to do is to create another account for that other store/region. The only caveat seems to be that store credit is not transferable between regions though. (But if you use other means to pay, like paypal or creditcard, that should not lead to having residual store credit).
You also then need to create a new profile too. And some more things to watch out for related to the international payments.
This article gives a pretty good description:
