PS3 censors through regional coding.

[Eusis]

GameBrink link.

Oh COME ON. We finally have the regional issue dealt with, and now we have this? Ironic that this could affect Japan more than us though.

[invinciblegod]

It also points out that you get to battle japanese gamers in Resistance and that they are much easier to kill. I would buy a japanese ps3 just for that!

[Murdoc]

Why would they do that?

Let the gamer decide to have the blood on or off, choices make games more fun.

[Cauton]

Probably because there are a few countries (Germany for an example) that don't allow games with blood in them. I don't think that this will be a problem for you Americans - you will probably not see much in the way of censored content ('cept for the usual removal of religious imagery and all that), but I could see Europeans get shafted due to said restrictions. Oh well, just another reason to import a PS3 from the States when I finally get around to buying one.

[Eusis]

Really, I think it's a little random here, and depends on the publisher. The reverse happened for XSIII, where we lost blood but Japan had it, and religious symbols rarely raise ire - it needs to be extremely, over the top blatant about it it seems, as Left Behind's the only one I've heard of actually drawing attention. There's also the alcohol stuff, but that involves little in graphics and is more about the actual translation.

I kinda expect that the ESRB could, amusingly, cancel this out. They won't tolerate it being on the disc period, accessible or not, so they'll just flat out remove it for the US version, and /possibly/ not give a crap about it being there in other versions, making importing to circumvent a breeze there. But they may do it anyway to cover their asses.

Sony was getting it right, but now I think they dropped the ball here - I just hope someone takes on the idea and handles it without ridiculous bullshit, like we've seen on handhelds.

[Degolas]

That really is fucking ridiculous. Why can't there simply be an option to turn it on or off, as Murdoc said? Games have done it in the past. Or the parental code that some games used to stop children from seeing the really gory stuff, why not use something similar to that for different regions?

[Britton]

I heard that the Neo geo did the same exact thing, only the Japanese got the blood and guts and the US didn't.