"Japan-exclusive"

Oh great. We're still doing this. F*** off, Square...

Yeah how dare they release something that only has a chance of selling well in Japan exclusively in Japan

Stop complaining. We're finally getting not just one, but TWO Final Mix releases in HD. That's reason enough to shower Japan in praise. =P

No. It's really not. That's content that was withheld from us for years. It's not praiseworthy when someone mistreats you and then doesn't. They should have treated you right in the first place

I'm not a fan of this box art, which is quite a shame considering how fond I was of 1.5's... the style of the art is just very different. Ordinarily I'd just be like "that's okay it's just change" but for an HD collection I would want them to be somewhat consistent. The lack of Kairi is pretty facking appalling too. She might not have had a huge role in either but she was in Kingdom Hearts II and Birth by Sleep.

i am disappoint nomura :(

Is there evidence to support that?

That it's Japan-exclusive? At this point I don't think so, they've been pretty quiet about what sort of editions or bundles we'll see for the rest of the world.

I meant about the idea that it would only sell in Japan.

I was wondering this too.
KH1 sold 2 times as many in North America as it did in Japan.
KH2 didn't sell as many as KH1 did, but it still sold .6 million more in North America.

Perhaps there was something else?

I don't think that is the case either honestly. While sales numbers are hard to pin down at times, I know that KH2 was selling more in North America than Japan. I don't think it would have changed dramatically since then. Though here in the US we've managed to kind of cap the price of games at $60 while the price has floated with inflation everywhere else (or far faster in some areas), so profit per sale here isn't the same.

While I've always considered FM to be something of a rip off for us, most of the other changes (such as limited edition bundles) I would chalk up more to just different marketing divisions doing their own thing. For 1.5 I would actually say we got the better end of the deal, so time will tell.

Here's the thing, that might SEEM like a lot, but consider this
There are 128 million people in Japan
529 million in North America

But that's not even all of it, there's a cultural difference too. It's why we didn't get the Final Mixes in the first place. In general, in North America rereleasing the same game a year later with a bit of extra content would be immensely hated, heck, look at the Last of Us Remastered, that's attracting a bunch of hate. In Japan it's just generally more accepted.
I tried finding some exact stats on collector's editions and stuff, no such specific stats exist, what I can say colloquially though is that there's just plain not enough interest in special editions and stuff. That's why Japan gets a bunch of cool special models and stuff for consoles and handhelds. They sell. When they try it in North America it pretty much always ends up not being worth the money to costs to bring over.

In fact, now I'm kinda curious, think I'll make a poll and see if I can't get some stats of my own