PS3 CENSORING?

If you like blood and gore in your games, like i do, then your choice of region when you buy a PS3 will be important!

There has been a lot of talk on whether the PS3 censors by hardware (machine) or software (disc region).

Seems like it's on a case by case basis.

JPN PS3's censors games (and MAYBE HK/ASIA ones too, not 100% sure yet, haven't fully researched).

Below is an excerpt of a post from another site that is no longer online, talking about how the PS3 censors stuff. Though there ARE ways to uncensor games though. Read on.

This raises an interesting ‘feature’ of PS3’s region coding that seems to have been kept quiet. I bought a Japanese copy of the critically acclaimed Resistance: Fall of Man at launch, with my Japanese PS3. Packaging aside, the Japanese Resistance and the US Resistance are feature identical. The discs both contain all languages and all game content. So I was somewhat surprised when I read impressions from US gamers discussing the game’s “hero moments” and the way the blood splatters on environmental objects. Blood? I completed the game and never saw a drop. Hero moments? These are sequences where you have the opportunity to save handy allies from a grisly death, not that I’d encountered any such sequences in the game. Something tricky was going on.

My experience of Resistance had been censored, completely unbeknownst to me. The once liberal Japanese have apparently become conservative regarding graphic depictions of violence recently. Resident Evil 4 (on GC and PS2) is a good example of this. It featured chainsaw decapitations and other explicit death scenes that were cut from the Japanese release, but remained elsewhere in the world. Resistance has apparently been adjusted to appease the censors too, but the method has changed.

No content has been cut from the Japanese release. If you take my Japanese copy of Resistance and start playing it on a US PS3, you’ll find it plays completely uncut, with all blood splattering and hero moments intact. Conversely, start playing a US copy of Resistance on a Japanese PS3 and the blood and hero moments are gone. The games have not been cut. The PS3 console itself is determining what gets cut.

A Japanese PS3 will censor games to meet the Japanese rating. It makes no difference if you’re signed on under a US profile, or playing a game you bought in the US or anywhere else. No doubt the US and forthcoming Euro/PAL PS3s will work the same way. Game content will be altered/cut on-the-fly to meet the ratings requirements of the region that machine was intended for. It certainly will be interesting to see how different PS3s handle a game like Grand Theft Auto 4.

This revelation probably comes as a bit of a kick in the teeth to people who’ve imported a Japanese PS3. The prospect of playing a needlessly censored version of Resident Evil 5 is somewhat depressing. Fear not! You shall go to the ball! I’m going to tell you how to get around this awful bit of region coding. The trick is all in the save file. When you boot up a game for the first time, your PS3 creates a save file in a folder on the hard drive for whichever user account is logged on. It’s then that the PS3 checks the hardware region coding and decides whether it will be censoring the game or not. It never performs this check again. So the key to getting around the censoring is getting your hands on another save file that was created on a PS3 from an uncensored region.

Here’s the catch - you can’t just get a save file created using the US release of a game on a US PS3 and expect it to work with a Japanese game. The disc IDs are different, so the game will refuse to load the save data. What you’ll need to do is have someone with a US (or other region) PS3 boot up the Japanese game disc. They don’t even have to start a new game. Just booting up the disc will create a save file that indicates the game is being used on US hardware. Take a copy of that save file and import it into your Japanese PS3. Bingo. You can now start a new game with all features uncensored. I’m playing Resistance again, on hard, with all blood and hero moments unlocked.

HEADACHE!!!

Contrary to what i posted in my PS3 impressions post, i checked again and i actually have ASIA Resistance instead of US Resistance.

So i'm playing ASIA Resistance on my ASIA PS3 and i can see blood! Haven't actually played long enough to see the 'hero moments' so i'm not sure if it's censored in any way or not, but it SEEMS like my ASIA Resistance on ASIA PS3 ISN'T censored.

I also have ASIA Ninja Gaiden Sigma but in all the times i've played it, fighting against the human ninjas, i can NEVER seem to cut off their heads.

I can cut off human heads in the DEMO of the game on my ASIA PS3. But i CANNOT cut off human heads on my ASIA Ninja Gaiden Sigma disc on my ASIA PS3.

And because of this, i'm not entirely sure if ASIA PS3's censors or not.

HEADACHE!!!

So, in closing, if you REALLY don't want headache on whether or not your PS3 will censor, get a US PS3.

Also, if you're interested in further reading, check out this forum thread about a guy who can't decide what region PS3 to get and his reasons for needing to choose.

http://forums.atari.com.au/index.php?showtopic=3633