Fire Pro World Info: PS4 Version and NJPW DLC 8/28 Worldwide

Everyone in Japan I spoke with said the same thing: most people don't have PCs in their home. The average family owns smartphones, and maybe a tablet. "Even if you have a PC at your house, you're more likely to use some sort of tax program or write your New Years cards on it," Salazar said.

Zach Huntley, who runs a small publishing support company in Japan called Kakehashi Games, said that teens and those in the 20-40 age bracket often have laptops, but that laptop is more than likely a MacBook, or is meant for business, not gaming. "This very small band of people have laptops, and this very, very small band of people have desktop PCs that are capable of playing 3D games. The thing is that those people who do have the desktop PCs and play on Steam, they have it specifically because they want to play western games. People aren't building super desktop PCs to play a 3D Japanese game, necessarily, on Steam. If they want to play Dark Souls 3, they're going to play it on PS4. They're building their PC rig specifically because they want to play the cool western stuff that's not coming out on any other platform."

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Challenge: Japan doesn't do credit cards

A few years ago, buying games on Steam [in Japan] was an insanely elaborate process: 'buying' the game online, taking an email verification code to a convenience store, entering that code into a touchscreen kiosk to print out a receipt, taking that receipt to the cashier, and paying. Then you could walk home and download your game. Imagine going through that much effort every time you wanted to buy a game on Steam.

Now there's a much better option—7-Elevens and other stores carry Steam wallet cards, alongside the stacks of points cards for mobile games, iTunes, and Google Play. But you still have to go to the store to stock up on digital currency.