Bandai Namco has announced the Japanese release dates for Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero. The game will appear in the country on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S on October 10, 2024—a day earlier than the global release date announced at Summer Game Fest. However, the company also newly confirmed that Japanese PC players will be able to get Sparking Zero via Steam on October 11, 2024.
The latter revelation is massive in Japan because it marks a shift in Bandai Namco’s policy of determining the release platforms for its games in the country. PC players in Japan have long criticized Bandai Namco and other prominent Japanese game companies for omitting PC releases of their games in their own country, even when the games are readily available to the rest of the world. This phenomenon is also known as “OmaKuni,” which is short for “We are not selling this in your country.”
In recent months, Bandai Namco has been taking steps to fix that discrepancy. In May 2024, it just made the Steam releases of Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, FighterZ, and Xenoverse 2 available for purchase in Japan. While Sparking Zero will be available to Japanese PC players simultaneously with the rest of the world, the above games used to be unavailable in the country for a long time. However, not all Dragon Ball games on Steam have been made available, as Japanese players still cannot access the first Xenoverse and Super Dragon Ball Heroes: World Mission as of June 2024.
Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero will appear first in Japan on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S on October 10, 2024. The global release date that includes the PC version will fall on October 11, 2024. The latter release on Steam will also be available in Japan on the same day.
Published: Jun 10, 2024 02:30 pm