I was looking at Play-Asia.com and was curious as to what the difference was between the Japanese version and the Asian version, since the price difference seems to tilt in the Asian version's favor.

Anyone have any experience buying between the 2 versions?

Japan is in Asia.

Depends on the game. For most part, many of the games will be localized in their language. And in many instances, you'll see that the Japanese version will also support english as well.

Very rarely you'll see the game being slight different on the version that is released on a later date w/ more options (sometimes less), bug fixes, etc...,

Typically, they're the same.

Japan is Japan and Asia is everywhere else not Japan. Like asong said English will probably be in the Japanese version. I don't think they are the same. Just my thought though.

There can be differences sometimes due to different cultural tastes. In Resistance for example the blood is removed in the Japanese version.

However, Resistance has all the localized versions contained on the same disc thanks to the room afforded by blu-ray. So supposedly if you bought Resistance in Japan and played in on a US PS3 you'd get the same game as the US disc, blood and all. That's just one game though, there's no guarantee other games will do it the same way.

Japan is in Asia.

How insightful. That still doesn't answer my question.

If you go to Play-Asia.com and take a look at the PS3 games listed, you get 3 versions. Japanese, Asian, and US.

So, in other words, if you get the Asian version, you don't know what you're getting?

Possibly some English, possibly Japanese, and possibly none of the above?

Aside from the language difference, you sometimes get shoddier packaging from the Asian games compared to the Japanese. Also Japanese versions of games sometimes get supplementary bonus materials (postcards, figurines, that kind of stuff). Other than that its much more worth it to get the Asian compared to the Japanese version.

Ugh. I haven't bought an Asian version PS game in a while, so my notes may be outdated. But anyway.

The main difference is usually the following --

The Asian version has a different model # and is pretty much identical to the Japanese disc. (The game is usually in Japanese, etc. They're released a couple days apart.)

Sometimes (well most of the time in my experience), the Asian version comes with another pamphlet in Chinese and English explaining the instructions of the game. Also, there may be more English used on the outside packaging. The JP versions never come with these pamphlets (this is something that Asian versions get extra in other words).

Otherwise, you pretty much have the Japanese version game disc. Also, the packaging is slightly different of course. But for collector's appeal, I always go with the JP version. (Also, you think they're going to take the time to translate an RPG originally written into Japanese into Chinese and release it a couple days apart from the JP version? Don't kid yourself. Those kinds of translations take months.)