A 4Gamer interview with Sony’s President Shuhei Yoshida has him offer his own insight into the ongoing localization controversy with Dead or Alive Xtreme 3. When asked about the issue, Mr. Yoshida had this to say:
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.
Compared with the statement we’ve read from the anonymous Team Ninja Facebook CM about this, it does seem that Japanese developers are concerned about the increased scrutiny that the depictions of women in video games have been placed under Western games media as of late. Mr. Yoshida mentioned Dragon’s Crown as one such example of criticism:
I loved Dragon’s Crown, but that title got some criticism. And it got extremely low points in [some] reviews.
He later clarified on his Twitter account that it was “because of character design”. I don’t think it’s hard to guess which reviews and which designs he’s talking about.
SOURCE (This translation was done by Niche Gamer’s Claude Smith and Twitter user @mombot, credit goes to them as well.)
