Eteric Rice said:
You know, seeing as how prices of just about every video game in Japan drops pretty quickly, I wouldn't be surprised if most Japanese people didn't just wait until a price collapse for most games.
It happens so fast, there's no reason to buy on day 1, really.
Well, it kind of gets over-stated here. If you live in one of the big cities, then yeah, you can count on a price drop on a fair bit of stuff within a short amount of time, particularly in Akiba and Denden, but if you're not in one of the major hubs of Japan, the prices almost never drop within any reasonable timeframe. The only quick bargain-binners I've seen in the town I live in were NiGHTS: JoD, NiGHTS PS2, and Captain Rainbow.
A more typical pattern is that the store hangs onto weak sellers as long as they can, then dumps them all 8 months later for 1000-2000 yen, or lump them into a New Year's or Golden Week sale.