Microsoft announced on June 9 that Gears of War: Reloaded will not be launching on PlayStation 5 in Japan. According to a notice on Xbox Wire Japan, “regional rating restrictions and platform policies” are to blame for the cancellation.
While fans in Japan will still be able to play Gears of War: Reloaded on all other planned platforms on launch day, the PS5 release has been forgone entirely. This is possibly due to the platform’s local restrictions related to gore. Gears of War is known for its graphic depictions of gore and violence, which caused the original 2006 release on Xbox 360 to be censored in Japan, with scenes of severed limbs being blacked out. As for the remaster, it seems the gore was judged too extreme to release the game by PlayStation’s standards. Or alternatively, Microsoft may have been asked for modifications it was unable to comply with. So far, there has been no censorship confirmed for other versions of the game.
Unfortunately, this kind of cancellation is not rare in Japan. Striking Distance Studio’s The Callisto Protocol was cancelled on all platforms after failing to obtain an age rating from Japan’s rating board (CERO). Similarly, the Dead Space remake from 2023 was banned from releasing on consoles in Japan, and Dead Space 2 only recently became available on Steam after being locked from Japanese users for 12 years. More recently, Ubisoft’s Assassins Creed: Shadows was forced to censor depictions of gore (specifically severed heads and limbs) despite being rated CERO Z (ages 18 and up).
Gears of War: Reloaded launches August 26 for Steam, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, Xbox Cloud Gaming and PlayStation 5. The PS5 release will not be available in Japan.
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