Why is Japan’s Dark Souls II collector’s edition so much better than ours?

I don’t normally care about collector’s editions, special editions or any of the other editions that lurk behind any major game launch. In fact, I usually find them a little bit extravagant and not overly worthwhile.

I remember one of my friends showing me the cheap plastic batarang he got with his Arkham Asylum special edition. He was horrified when I showed him how much the item cost on China’s Taobao (less than $10 at the time) and his face fell quite dramatically as we calculated that buying it in China, shipping it and then buying the normal game would have worked out significantly cheaper than the $99 he dropped on the collectors edition.

That being said, the guys over at Dark Souls II have pulled out all the stops with this incredibly sexy collector’s edition of the game:

Now, this I can get on board with! This is not tacky crap, this is downright gorgeous; everything from the embossing on the box, to the contents themselves ooze awesome. I want! Unfortunately for those of us in the world outside Japan, we are cursed with the usual collector’s edition crap:

I wonder how much I can get that figure for on Taobao?

Dark Souls II will be launched in March 2014 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.