Tuesday's Nintendo Direct was so loaded, you might still be digesting everything that was revealed. We finally know what Metroid Prime 4 looks like, Nintendo confirmed its third Mario RPG in less than a year, and there's a new Zelda game launching in September. Not a port or a remaster, but an entirely new Zelda game. Tucked in there was an exciting reveal for Ace Attorney fans. The Ace Attorney Investigations Collection is coming to Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and PC, but if you want a physical copy, there's some rather strange fine print to take note of.
That there will be a physical version at all of this collection should be celebrated. However, not only will where you live dictate whether you can buy the Investigations Collection's physical edition, but the game will only be available physically on certain platforms in certain regions. If you live in the US, you can pre-order a physical copy of the collection on Switch. If you live in the UK and Europe, the only platform on which a physical copy is available is PS4.
There's no crossover and seemingly nowhere in the world where you can buy the physical edition on both platforms. Also nowhere at all that it will be releasing on Xbox. If you visit the European version of the collection's site, the only option listed when attempting to pre-order a physical copy is on PS4. Switch to the US site and the only option you'll find is Switch. Capcom hasn't explained why it has decided to do that, and so far I've neither come up with nor seen a logical explanation why it has chosen this route.
Bad News For Anyone Who Wants A Physical Copy, Terrible News If You Want It On Xbox
There's a chance this changes in the future and Capcom releases physical copies of its Ace Attorney Investigations Collection worldwide. You can also buy physical copies of the games on different platforms and get them shipped since neither Switch nor PS4 games are region-locked. That will likely add a significant amount to the price of your game due to shipping costs, and Capcom limiting physical editions of the collection on certain platforms means there might not be that many copies to go around.
Perhaps Capcom wants to keep what have, until this point, been the rarest installments in the Ace Attorney series relatively rare, at least when it comes to physical copies. The collection's release will mark the first time Ace Attorney Investigations 2 has ever been released outside of Japan. The decision to region-lock physical copies for certain platforms comes after Square Enix revealed a Life Is Strange: Double Exposure collector's edition that doesn't actually include a copy of the game.
