PlayStation 5 next major release set to be unplayable for millions of us following ban

Depending on where you live, you won’t be able to play one of the biggest upcoming PlayStation 5 games on the platform… thanks to a recently announced ban.

As spotted by Automaton Media, and subsequently translated into English, Microsoft’s title Gears of War: Reloaded won’t be launching on the PlayStation 5 in Japan on August 26.

The remastered version of the title was announced to be coming to PlayStation 5 by Microsoft some time ago, alongside the Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, and PC versions of the game.

The weird thing is, you can still play Gears of War: Reloaded on PC and Xbox Series S/X in Japan. It’s only specifically the PlayStation 5 version of the game that’s been affected. So, what’s the deal?

Well, according to the machine-translated explanation from Xbox Wire Japan, the ban is due to “regional rating restrictions and platform policies”. But surely regional rating restrictions would apply to every console if they’re being dictated by a Japanese ratings board, right?

Turns out, no. The issue here actually lies in that “platform policies” bit. Basically, Sony has its own, specific policies for PlayStation titles in Japan.

By the sounds of things, it’s the gore in Gears of War: Reloaded that’s preventing the title from coming out on the system in Japan, something that Sony is quite strict about when it comes to Japanese releases. Assumedly this means that, at some point in time, a censored version of the title may still be released in the region (just certainly not at launch).

Considering how terrible the sales for Xbox platforms have been in Japan since, well, forever, this has gotta be a huge disappointment for a lot of folks over there.

This would have been millions of folks' first opportunity to actually play a Gears of War title, so hopefully something is done to rectify this in the coming weeks.