Gears of War: Reloaded is no longer coming out in Japan for the PS5 due to "regional rating restrictions and platform policies," despite the Xbox and PC versions still being released on August 26.
Gears of War is getting its second remaster very soon, with the big gimmick this time around being that the game is finally making the jump away from Xbox and letting PlayStation players in on the fun (with a bunch of betas coming before it launches on August 26). However, in Japan – where PlayStation has always been significantly more popular – the game will only be releasing on Xbox and PC.
This was announced on a Xbox Wire Japan post (spotted and translated by Automaton, and verified using machine translation), in a post which explains the game won't be releasing on the platform due to "regional rating restrictions and platform policies."
While Japanese players are advised that they'll still be able to play the game at launch on Steam, Xbox Series X|S, and Game Pass, an apology has been issued for anyone inconvenienced by the PS5 version not releasing.
While not as eager to ban games as some countries, Japan has previously banned games with copious amounts of gore like 2022's The Callisto Protocol and the Dead Space Remake. Plus Assassin's Creed Shadows was censored in the country, with the dismemberment toned down vastly (which seems to be a sticking point given that Dead Space is all about the dismemberment).
Automaton mentions that the original release of Gears of War in 2006 did in fact release in a censored state, with some scenes depicting severed limbs being affected.
The post doesn't specify why only the PS5 version is affected when the game is presumably the same across both platforms, so I'm assuming that the "platform policies" section is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here.
We saw some more of Gears of War: Reloaded at Summer Game Fest this year, making an appearance during the Xbox Games Showcase.
