

Japan getting bonuses has been a thing for a long time and not exclusive to video games. I remember having to use less than legal ways to get exclusive songs off CD releases from some of my favorite musical artists because only Japan got those exclusives. And they didn’t hide it either. The CD literally said “Japanese exclusive”.
The only reason I’ve found is that it’s to encourage Japanese customers to buy the merchandise in their region and not buy outside of it. I’ve heard it had to do with a weaker currency’s valuation in the Yen and so giving them exclusives made it less likely they’d buy from another country to save cash by getting the exact same product. That’s also partly why region locks are a thing to prevent people from buying in a cheaper region.

What is that policy? I’m not familiar with that.
Yeah, I’ve heard that before like the Switch 2 being cheaper than the US and the used market is much much cheaper in price and quality than the US for consoles and games.