So I'm the kind of person who would just rather have a physical copy of a game. I do live in a smaller city with not the best internet and just don't enjoy waiting 8 hours, bogging down my internet while PSN downloads a game.

Today I went out to buy the game and everywhere is sold out.. Only one gamestop in my area has a copy. The 4 closest Wal-Marts are sold out, and the Target near me is also sold out. Amazon is also sold out telling me the estimated shipping is 1-2 months. This game isn't THAT popular is it? Has anyone else see this issue in their area?

They probably didn't print a ton of initial copies because they figured it'd be a pretty niche title, but then reviews hit and turns out the game is incredible, so everyone went out and bought em all up.

I'm looking at Amazon now and seeing the same message, but I would keep checking back every day. It usually doesn't take 1-2 months to restock regular editions of recently-released games. In my experience, that's essentially just a placeholder message until they get a more concrete date which is usually a few weeks out at most.

It was sold out practically everywhere in the UK this week. Amazon were getting small amount of stocks each day and it is now in stock but they must have underestimated demand by a lot. Our only physical retail chain is GAME and they had sold out locally. A rare thing these days.

Yep it was definitely low stocked. Here in AUS I went to/called 5 EB Games and 4 JB-Hifis and all of them were sold out except 1 EB had 1 copy left. I asked them how much stock they were given I was told 8 copies for JB and 10 copies for EB. I was initially shocked when they said they were sold out for such a niche title then I realized probably very low stock. Seems like they sent this game out expecting it to die.

@ivdamke: I imagine they were expecting Koei sales (~500k), which is generally enough to be profitable but not necessarily massive; occasionally some of their games hit big in Japan/Korea but I for one expected Nioh to be about that size of playerbase and to grow over time; but the game is so much better than it seemed in any of the betas (where it seemed like a competent souls clone); hell the beta levels, while decent are fairly underwhelming compared to the absolutely incredible middle/late game levels (with one exception that's okay).

Going to take a miracle for something to be better than Nioh this year or until Cyberpunk comes out really. Thankfully the game has 150-200+ hours of content.

Nioh 2 will come out pretty quickly I imagine, Koei is extraordinarily prolific when it comes to games; that said while it will certainly be good this period of history really works the best (next would likely be 30-50 years earlier in Japanese History) unless they wanted to depart to Three Kingdoms Era China (seems kind of inevitable but probably not for a while).

It's been a while since actual real physical scarcity of a game has been a serious thing, huh? The last time I remember a game being surprisingly hard to find at retail when it came out was with Fire Emblem Awakening.

Like you, I generally still prefer physical copies (and have slow-ass internet) so I just decided to bite the bullet and order it on Amazon now so I could get the Prime discount. That way, when it does ship, it will be a pleasant surprise!

Physical has all the advantages over digital except one; and that one is why I buy digital. Because I can't be bothered to swap a disc if I want to play a different game. That's how insanely good of a life we all have. 'Meh, I feel like it's too much effort to perform an action for 10 seconds by swapping these data holding discs in this compact high tech computer which consists of near-microscopic tech fabricated in giant factories for my satisfaction. I'll just give you additional digital numbers so I don't have to do that. Also, let me get this 600 dollar device out of my pocket and call, no wait... let me just open this application so I don't have to talk to anyone because I can't be bothered to do so; and get some large amount of food I totally do not require for survival brought to me and put in my lap. Ugh, tomorrow is sunday which means I only have one more day of total paradise before I have to do some chores. My life is so tough'.

It is not surprising, i doubt even sony thought this game would review as well as it has.

GameStop has copies, I know a fair amount of people hate shopping there but if you really want a copy you have an option.

http://www.gamestop.com/ps4/games/nioh/130876

It's been tough for people preferring physical copies, and especially physical copies of Japanese games, over the past few years. Nowadays I often wonder if I need to pull the trigger quickly or even pre-order more niche Japanese titles I am interested in, because they seem to low-ball the print-run and you're not sure whether they'll just disappear and sky-rocket in price for the physical copy.

However, I think Nioh is going to be enough of a hit to see another print run.