The Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 debacle has been a hot topic of late, and now the President of Sony himself, Shuhei Yoshida has weighed in his own thoughts surrounding the issues.
In a recent interview with 4gamer, Yoshida was talking how the Japan’s game marketplace had reached “adulthood”, but they had to be conscious of their decision when it comes to the overseas market.
This spurred the interviewer to bring up the recent controversy of Dead Or Alive Extreme 3 not coming to the west due to the western issues of female depictions in video games. Yoshida replied with this:
It’s due to cultural differences. The West has it’s own thinking about how to depict women in games media which is different from Japan […] Speaking personally, if it is a representation acceptable to the general people in Japan, I wouldn’t be concerned about it in Japan. It’s a difficult problem.
Yoshida even brought up how Dragon’s Crown met with similar criticism (regarding their portrayal of women), and even attributed some of the game’s lower scores due to that.
I loved Dragon’s Crown, but that title got some criticism. And it got extremely low points in [some] reviews.
This is probably the most telling reason we’ll get regarding this issue, and it seems to reinforce many peoples’ fears of Japanese game developers and publishers not bringing their games to the west in fear of similar criticisms.
(Source: nichegamer)
Although he has been gaming since the Sega Mega Drive launched in 1990, he still sucks at most games. When not being trash he watches French horror films, drinks herbal tea and secretly loves the music of Taylor Swift.
