Well yes, and Sony is crazy about anti-piracy, protection, and etc. Irony, eh?
Also I believe it has something to do with the CERO ratings.
Especially in Europe where the rating board is extremely strict. (French people can certainly relate, right?) Several games had to be severely altered to get their European debut. (Heavy Rain for example)
I don't think they want people to import games without the proper ratings according to their region.
I laughed when I saw that Gravure 4 you is rated CERO C (rating of the original idolm@ster) while idolm@ster 2 is only rated CERO B.
I wish they also rated games on their kanji content. (That way people wouldn't see CERO A and think "oh this game is for children.")
This would really help!!
Well, I do freelance work for the Australian Classifications Board, in writing its reports.
For most part, most censorship of the European version is due to the Australian Classification rules.
This is due to how regioning is done - Australia is part of PAL. (And for all intents and purposes, even though we've moved to HD and stuff, we're still split in NTSC/PAL areas. Go figure)
Australia also has one of the strictest systems in the world, but this is due to the fact that CERO and ESRB ratings aren't actually binding. You can release a game in both of the countries without a rating (In Japan it would default to 18+, and in the US, major game vendors will refuse to stock it.) but in Australia, releasing a unrated game can get you massive fines and jailtime.
And so is misrepresenting a game that exceeds the boundaries that you claim it is. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, how does losing a couple of million dollars sound? (Rockstar got nailed with a huge fine once and suffered a recall over the hot coffee mod.)
So you can guess what happens. It's easier to just take the most stringent bar and just apply it across the board. It's usually Australia, but depending, sometimes Germany is the bottleneck (Left for Dead 2 more or less). France and the PEGI block are pretty good and consistent.
However, due to the fact it's forced, it's very uncommon for a game to be submitted to the board, and not subsequently released. There's costs in processing a report though, and it's all reported publicly too.
(It also has the nice side effect of making the first point of suing the government itself over any 'damage' a child takes when playing a game, assuming that no deception and/or child neglect on the parents' side happened)
I've pondered throwing idolm@ster Live for you to the Classifications board (since I have standing as an expert) just to see if they'll let me do it. And probably get everyone's hopes up or something. And probably cover my butt if I start doing public performances.
That and to put the report in, it'd cost me a couple of thousand dollars. If nothing else, the subsequent report will confuse the hell out of everyone, including a lot of agencies that treat the Classification Board like the Australian release word of god for gaming.
(Yeah, that's one of my part time jobs. I'm someone with a lot of weird stuff up my sleeve.)
