Proving that it’s useful to keep abreast of differences in regional tastes, Koei Tecmo has confirmed it won’t be bringing Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 to European Union countries or America – because it fears a backlash over how the game represents women. In 1996, the net wasn’t as ubiquitous, so you had this scene where you had to go to a video store and overcome your shame as you went up to the clerk.
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While this doesn’t detail much as to why, Team Ninja elaborated in a follow-up.
The Dead or Alive Xtreme series debuted on the original Xbox under the full title of “Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball”. Costumes include the Bath and Bedtime DLC, which dresses up Dead or Alive’s various female characters in bath towels, nightgowns and pyjamas.
When later asked about the reason behind this decision, the account pointed towards the criticism the series has faced in the past: “Do you know many issues happening in video game industry with regard to how to treat female in video game industry?”
Indeed, we can certainly see such a situation occur if the game was to launch overseas, and we suppose that the publisher just doesn’t want to deal with that sort of opposition.
The first two games were a weird collection of extremely (xtremely?) shallow mini-games that amounted to nothing more than fetishising over computer-generated women in bikinis.
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Responding to questions from fans on Facebook, a representative for publisher Koei Tecmo wrote: “We do not bring DOAX3 to the west and won’t have any plan change in the future”. In Dead or Alive 5 you can unlock an “OMG breast motion” option in the menu, which does what you’d expect.
