Sony seems to be changing their policies for new releases on their consoles, and Senran Kagura Burst Re:Newal is one of the releases affected by these policies. The Senran Kagura franchise is made up of a multitude of games on different genres, including beat ’em ups, third person shooters, dating sims, and more. The series originally debuted on the Nintendo 3DS on September 22, 2011 but has seen releases on a variety of different consoles since then.
For the uninformed who have no idea what the series also has to offer other than a variety of seemingly different games, the franchise follows underaged ninja girls who are in high school. Almost every title in the series include a core gameplay feature that revolves around clothing damage. Even the rhythm cooking game in the Senran Kagura series has this clothing damage feature, something extremely telling for what kind of series this is. The series also has body physics that some would consider unrealistic; all of this combined makes for a franchise that has been controversial in the West to say the least.
According to a tweet made by the US publishers, with the removal of “Intimacy Mode” from the PlayStation 4 version, the release date for Senran Kagura Burst Re:Newal as a whole has been delayed; even the Steam version has been delayed which has no content removed or changed. While the original release date was November 16, 2018, there has been no update at the time of writing for the new release date.
“Intimacy Mode” is a mode that allows players to spray water on and grope the scantily clad characters, and it primarily makes use of the extreme body physics that the series is known for. The US PlayStation 4 release will lack this mode, but it will still have all other gameplay elements and modes included.
Prior Senran Kagura games on the PlayStation 4 included “Intimacy Mode” and it seems that the new policy would have also affected it had it been released today. It is yet to be seen what exactly the policy entails and how this policy will affect other releases on the console, but it will possibly change what is included in future releases of the Senran Kagura series.