Huge Rise of the Ronin Discount Spotted at Walmart

Highlights

One lucky PS5 owner stumbled on a 45% discount on Rise of the Ronin at Walmart.
They ended up saving over $30 on an unopened copy of the game less than a week following its release.
Precedent suggests that Rise of the Ronin won’t go on an official sale before late spring or early summer 2024.

One lucky PlayStation 5 owner has recently come across a 45% discount on Rise of the Ronin at Walmart. The hefty price cut was spotted less than a week after Rise of the Ronin officially hit the store shelves.

Team Ninja’s latest title was launched on March 22 following a lengthy development cycle. The studio’s long-awaited foray into open-world games elicited mostly positive reactions from critics, with many reviewers praising Rise of the Ronin for its granular character customization, deep RPG mechanics, and combat that successfully toes the line between challenging and accessible.

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Rise of the Ronin and Like a Dragon: Ishin each examine the same formative period in Japan’s history, but do so from nearly opposite perspectives.

And while many Team Ninja fans have so far opined that the game is well-worth the full price, Reddit user HDTokyo got a much better deal on it already, if only by pure accident. Namely, they have recently been surprised to find their local Walmart selling the Standard Edition of Rise of the Ronin at $38.81, nearly 45% off its regular price. The image of their heavily discounted copy clearly shows it featuring the yellow Customer Value Program (CVP) label, which Walmart normally uses for marking down “imperfect products,” as per its official policy. In practice, the sticker also frequently ends up adorning returned goods.

That description appears to match HDTokyo’s copy of the game, even though it was unopened. The fan couldn’t believe their luck, having written how it is “crazy [that] someone would return it without even opening the game or unwrapping it.” They are consequently now already in the process of enjoying Team Ninja’s newest title, even though they weren’t planning on buying it at launch. Elaborating on that point, HDTokyo opined that Rise of the Ronin “doesn’t feel like it needed to be a $70 MSRP game,” but is “definitely worth it” at such a hefty discount.

First Official Rise of the Ronin Discount Is Possibly Happening in Summer 2024

Those who agree with that sentiment may be able to pick it up at a reduced price come late spring or early summer 2024. Most games from Koei Tecmo’s subsidiaries tend to be treated to their first official sale around three months post-release. E.g., Team Ninja’s ARPG Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty received its inaugural international discount in late June 2023. However, it took eight months for it to temporarily drop to $40, which is still more than what HDTokyo ended up paying for their unopened copy of Rise of the Ronin.

It is currently too early to tell exactly how well Team Ninja’s latest title has performed during its launch week. What’s clear already is that its sales weren’t helped by Rise of the Ronin debuting on the same day as Dragon’s Dogma 2, another open-world RPG that had the advantage of being a multi-platform release instead of a PS5 exclusive.