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We previously reported on Senran Kagura series producer Kenichiro Takaki noting the recent censorship policies from Sony have prolonged development time for their games. Another note from Takaki further elaborates on how they’re changing their own internal design to further align with Sony’s new policies.
The Senran Kagura producer and Honey∞Parade Games president talked up Sony’s new censorious policies on sexual content in a new interview with Inside Games.jp, where he confirmed “the original idea we had planned [for Senran Kagura 7EVEN] is seemingly impossible to release.”
“So, we’re redoing or possible reconsidering everything about the game,” Takaki added. Furthermore, this was in response to Sony’s regulations on sexual content, to which Takaki noted regulations on sexual content are getting stricter around the world, on every platform and genre. “I’m really worried about what to do right now,” he said.
When asked if the tougher regulations on sexual content for PlayStation 4 might force the series having an exodus to mostly PC, Takaki said “It’s not impossible.” He added, “When considering the genre and its niche appeal, it would be difficult to make the game only for PC. The PC has a lot of realistic shooters, so.. if we can do that, we will, but a lot is in the air right now.”
Takaki’s comments today echo previous comments where they considered toning down the sexual content. When asked (by Akiba Souken) if he or Marvelous purposefully directed battle scenes within Senran Kagura to have sexy angles, he said “I did a part of it. However, in the ‘Senran Kagura’ series, I decided it to be ‘no eroticism for no reasons’.”
“Each of the visuals that is sexual shouldn’t be anything like ‘we don’t know why but we are looking at her shorts from the bottom,’ or ‘we don’t know why she’s undressed,’ but we are trying to show the reasons (connections) of before and after why you look that way.”
Takaki’s comments weren’t definitively regarding Sony, but considering their new policy forced Marvelous and XSEED Games to remove a reoccurring feature for Senran Kagura Re:Newal in the west, and only on PlayStation 4, it’s likely the source of his new comments.
As mentioned in our first report, Sony’s new policy is forcing some Japanese developers to censor their games, even for release in Japan. The policy has seemingly been haphazardly applied, as some games are being censored, while others seem to be uncensored at release.
Senran Kagura 7EVEN is in development for PlayStation 4.
