[oefrha]

> Unfortunately, IARC age ratings can only be used for digital games and apps. Those who want to release a physical game in Japan must obtain an age rating from CERO – making it potentially cost prohibitive to give smaller titles a physical release in the country.

What’s the point of doing a physical release if you won’t even recoup ~$1300 + $400/port?

[CuriousCosmic]

Japan still uses a lot of physical games media. Lots of little game stores still exist (or at least a lot existed before COVID, I know a lot of specialty stores closed up during that) and doujin circles have historically made the bulk of their game sales (and generally gained their fame) from physical sales made during large events like comiket in their doujinsoft sections.

And while in the west this sounds kind of like a niche thing, a substantial number of the bigger games that have come out of Japan (excluding those from the AAA studios) either started their distribution with physical sales at conventions or their developers started off that way before they got enough of a following to just publish digitally and avoid the hassle.

So there's not really a clear cutoff between "studios" small enough to avoid the ire of the law and those large enough to afford getting all the ratings fees, etc paid for.