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Forums - Sony Discussion - Star Ocean 5 censorship of a woman 18 years old due to western pressure.

Teeqoz on 14 April 2016
outlawauron said:
Teeqoz said:

I'm not saying this isn't censorship, I'm just saying that it's not "due to western pressure". It's because SE thinks it's a smart thing to do financially.

But the reason why it's being done is to avoid controversy. Changing this type of thing has no positive impact on sales, especially with the scathing commentary SE got from their Japanese fans.

If  SE didn't believe it would affect their bottom line, they wouldn't have done it. Especially not if they believed censoring it would impact their bottom line negatively.



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bigtakilla on 14 April 2016
Teeqoz said:
bigtakilla said:

It's not what the developer is quoted as saying, so that would be a far stretch.

You think Shuichi Kobayashi himself personally designed Miki's panties?

I think he knows why changes occur in his game.



Cobretti2 on 14 April 2016

granny panties (i dont mean the ones from the 1950s but full covered butt lol) are in atm in the west anyway. hardly see a woman were a g-string these days.

on another note i saw that youtube video and the change is soo00o small i don't think many would have noticed. I had to replay it 5 times to try to work out what that douche was complaining about. Literally a few pixels of white lol



 

 

bigtakilla on 14 April 2016
Cobretti2 said:
granny panties (i dont mean the ones from the 1950s but full covered butt lol) are in atm in the west anyway. hardly see a woman were a g-string these days.

on another note i saw that youtube video and the change is soo00o small i don't think many would have noticed. I had to replay it 5 times to try to work out what that douche was complaining about. Literally a few pixels of white lol

Wow, you had to watch it 5 times to see it? 



Teeqoz on 14 April 2016
bigtakilla said:
Teeqoz said:

You think Shuichi Kobayashi himself personally designed Miki's panties?

I think he knows why changes occur in his game.

Just because this was changed from the Japanese release to fit with western rating boards does not mean that the artists' original vision was the Japanese version

 

They could've been forced by SE to make it like that for Japanese fan service. So for all you know it's the Japanese version that differs from the artists' original vision



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Farsala on 14 April 2016
arcelonious said:
Pristine20 said:

And I actually used to be under the impression that "M-rated" games sold better in the west. I mean look at the ratings of the top western sellers. Do folks here somehow believe that the likes of GTA and COD would've sold better with a "T-rating"?

The teen or everyone ratings under the ESRB simply enable a broader audience to obtain the game compared to a mature game (17 and up).  It's also important to note that it seemingly did not take much to keep Star Ocean at their desired rating, whereas GTA would probably have to change dramatically to obtain a teen rating (which in turn would severely affect its success), so it's difficult to compare the two in this situation.

This change wouldn't change the rating. Whatever it would get normally is what it gets..

I have games with much worse things happening that got a T.



arcelonious on 14 April 2016
Farsala said:
 

This change wouldn't change the rating. Whatever it would get normally is what it gets..

I have games with much worse things happening that got a T.

I'm afraid I have to go by what Kobayashi has stated regarding the rating check/submission for Star Ocean, since the producer would be more knowledeable on the outcome.



Rob5VGC on 14 April 2016

Let's quote the real reason on why this happened, which Kobayashi answered 2 weeks ago:

Kobayashi: “Recently, there’s been a lot of flak from overseas countries saying that if you put teens in ‘sexual’ underwear it’s not good. So we increased the amount of clothing.”

http://nichegamer.com/2016/03/28/square-enix-gave-star-ocean-5s-miki-bigger-panties-in-fear-of-western-criticism/

Reminder: Miki is 18. 18 is by law an adult in western countries. Some adult ages may be higher or lower, which the SO5 staff could have easily countered instead of caving and altering her panties.



Farsala on 14 April 2016
arcelonious said:
Farsala said:

This change wouldn't change the rating. Whatever it would get normally is what it gets..

I have games with much worse things happening that got a T.

I'm afraid I have to go by what Kobayashi has stated regarding the rating check/submission for Star Ocean, since the producer would be more knowledeable on the outcome.

It got a similar rating in Japan as T in US. No way it would have changed, but they might have added "Sexual content" as print on the back. Either way translation errors happen, and it might have been interpretted different as well.

 

It is funny to me that SE cares, since Type 0 HD got an M rating and sold ok. And that M rating was not from anything sexual, mostly the tiny amount of blood.



tsogud on 14 April 2016

I'm really beginning to hate this new censorship meme... I mean seriously, this is such a trivial thing to get upset about...