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Senran Kagura Burst Re:Newal Game's English Release Delayed to Remove 'Intimacy Mode' from PS4 Versi

You mean the same Nintendo that's been involved in the editing of various games released on their systems even into the modern era?

That's what the 17+/ M rating is for but the ESRB ratings have never been properly enforced which is why most folks don't allow stuff like the AO rating. There's nothing preventing kids from fubbing dates and all.

It's been an issue since the ESRB was formed in response to stuff like MK and Night Trap. Take the original Halo for instance. Outside of the Flood, nothing in that game warranted an M and it was still an M.

You mean the same Nintendo that's been involved in the editing of various games released on their systems even into the modern era?

Now, I'm not foolish enough to think no game is never going to be censored on it, but so far it seems the Switch is a lot more lenient than the Wii U and 3DS were. I suppose we'll just have to wait to see what the systems Fire Emblem Fates or Tokyo Mirage Sessions will be.

The very same Nintendo that no longer forces censorship. Have you seen some of the games on the Switch eShop?

While I agree the feature was never that important (only used to get trophies) I'd say its more about the principle of being against censorship at all. You give an inch they take a mile as they say. It's a slippery slope and people are rightly angry about it.

GNPixie wrote:

That's what the 17+/ M rating is for but the ESRB ratings have never been properly enforced which is why most folks don't allow stuff like the AO rating. There's nothing preventing kids from fubbing dates and all. It's been an issue since the ESRB was formed in response to stuff like MK and Night Trap. Take the original Halo for instance. Outside of the Flood, nothing in that game warranted an M and it was still an M.

Although formed under pressure, the ESRB is officially voluntary at the American national level. No video game is required to be rated, no organization to issue ratings is required to exist, and any rating a game receives is unenforceable.

However, the days of the video game panic and Jack Thompson are behind us. I do still think that there would be some controversy if Sony were to release an AO rated game on the Playstation(because again there's that porn association), though not nearly as much as if say Nintendo allowed one to be released on the Switch. It doesn't sound to me like this intimacy mode would even result in an AO rating though.

Although formed under pressure, the ESRB is officially voluntary at the American national level. No video game is required to be rated, no organization to issue ratings is required to exist, and any rating a game receives is unenforceable.

It's true the ESRB rating enforcement is voluntary, but so is the MPAA rating enforcement. And the post by GNPixie is in fact quite inaccurate. The ESRB ratings have always been the best enforced of any age rating in the US, sometimes by a massive degree. FTC secret shopper surveys have tested this many times, and frankly it was embarrassing how for the MPAA ratings how badly they were enforced by comparison some years.

The reason why platform holders like Nintendo and Sony wouldn't allow the AO ratings isn't out of fear that they wouldn't be enforced, but because most AO games are porn games, and outright porn has a pretty heavy level of stigma to it in the US and a lot of other places. They simply didn't want to be associated with it, regardless of whether they could show that the ratings would be enforced well.

However, the days of the video game panic and Jack Thompson are behind us. I do still think that there would be some controversy if Sony were to release an AO rated game on the Playstation(because again there's that porn association), though not nearly as much as if say Nintendo allowed one to be released on the Switch. It doesn't sound to me like this intimacy mode would even result in an AO rating though. I guess we'll know for sure when we see what the Steam version get's rated.

So this isn't about the ESRB ratings, but something that predates them: that platform holders like Sony/Nintendo/etc can decide what they want to allow to be released on their systems, and can do so arbitrarily. And sometimes it can seem a little weird (my favorite lol what moment that happened relatively recently was probably the censoring of Tharja's butt in the Fire Emblem Awakening DLC that actually made it look lewder in a way) but that's life. Hey at least in this case you potentially have an alternative with the Steam version.

Nintendo already has some gravure stuff on the (English) Eshop that might as well be porn. It's an interesting shift between Sony, a company that used to thrive on eccentric Japanese stuff, and Nintendo, a company who just a couple years ago was choppy with stuff. I do wonder if it might Sony trying to distance themselves from stuff like the end years of the Vita as a whole.

The handling of FE in general has been interesting to see, yeah, especially as someone who got their FE history started with Holy War. That game had some stuff that never would've made it over originally but now you've got things like Camilla in general (and the acknowledgement of that absurd character design in general in Warriors) and not shying away from embracing the modern FE quirks with stuff like Heroes.