Amazon Japan Making Importing Games Easier

Importing games and hardware just became a little easier thanks to Amazon Japan, which is now selling and shipping specific video games to customers outside of the country.

As reported, and tested, by NeoGAF users, the retailer now allows the language on its site to be switched to English and translates all the important information fields needed to sign in and make a purchase.

Purchasing requires an Amazon Japan account, however, as accounts from other territories aren't usable. Helpfully, the retailer also does the conversions to show how much an item costs in your local currency.

This is particularly useful for buying games that have English subtitles, but have not been released outside of Asian territories. Many games have these options to cater for the Chinese market. Additionally, specific Japan-exclusive hardware bundles will no doubt be much easier to acquire.

It seems Amazon Japan will offer make products available for purchase outside of Japan on a case-by-case basis.

In other Amazon news, the company is continuing its push into gaming with Amazon Lumberyard, a free, cross-platform, 3D game engine it says is capable of delivering the "highest quality games," featuring "beautiful worlds, realistic characters, and stunning real-time effects."

Lumberyard features native support for Twitch, which Amazon purchased Twitch in 2014 for $1 billion, and has a "full-featured editor" and "hundreds" of other elements including cloth physics, character and animation editors, audio tools, weather effects, and vehicle systems.