Despite being initially announced as a digital-only release, some hope for a physical version of Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies popped up back in June. At the time Capcom said it might be possible with enough fan support, but a recent Q&A with Ace Attorney producer Motohide Eshiro put an end to all that.

Here's an excerpt from the full Q&A:

Kinnikumask asks: Is there still any hope for a physical release of Dual Destinies in the west?

Eshiro: In response to fan feedback we looked into a western physical release of Dual Destinies but from the beginning of the project, one of our goals has been to bring the game to the western market much more quickly than we have been able to in the past. As text adventures, the Ace Attorney games require a lot of time for localization, so we really moved the proverbial mountains and had a lot of people work very hard to get the text localized as quickly as possible—while of course maintaining the high quality level fans are accustomed to.

As part of this, we made the decision to release on digital only in the west in order to take manufacturing time out of the equation and allow the release date to be as early as possible. So the answer is, no, Dual Destinies will be a digital download-only release in the west.

That's too bad for those hoping to own a physical copy of Dual Destinies, but at least we can still look forward to downloading the game when it makes its fall debut on the 3DS eShop. 

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Joseph Luster is the Games and Web editor at Otaku USA Magazine. His blog can be found at subhumanzoids. Follow him on Twitter at @Moldilox.