Aokana: Four Rhythms Across The Blue to be Censored on PlayStation 4 Due to Sony Policies, Physical PS4 Release Potentially Cancelled

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Jun 23, 2020

PQube Games has announced that the upcoming Western release of the Aokana: Four Rhythms Across The Blue visual novel will be censored on the PlayStation 4 at the request of Sony, keeping in line with the company’s questionable content policies.

On June 18th, PQube Games issued a statement via their official Twitter account announcing that the PlayStation 4 release of the visual novel will “contain amendments to a selection of images and text found in the game” including “four scenes which have been modified and three scenes which have been removed completely.”

Their full statement reads, “We have recently received many requests for clarification around the potential of scene modification on our upcoming Visual Novel release Aokana: Four Rhythm Across the Blue. These changes apply to the PlayStation 4 version only and contain amendments to a selection of images and text found in the game.”

They add, “This includes four scenes which have been modified and three scenes which have been removed completely. Many thanks to our fans and community for their continued support of our releases.”

First released in Japan in 2017, Aokana depicts a world in which anti-gravity ‘Grav-Shoes’ are common place, allowing wearers to traverse the skies at will. Using this technology as a basis for its mechanics, a new sport called Flying Circus is invented, an aerial combination of a speed race and ‘tag.’

The player controls Masaya Hinata, a retired Flying Circus prodigy who becomes the coach of a newly formed team at his school, as he trains the girls on his team and even enters into romantic relationships with a team member on a given route.

When asked if they could reveal the specific scenes, PQube Games explained they could not “disclose the exact scenes,” noting that the company was not “at liberty to directly show the difference ourselves,” leaving fans to only speculate as to which scenes were altered.

However, despite the game’s censorship on the PlayStation 4, PQube Games has confirmed that the Nintendo Switch release of Aokana will be completely unaltered:

PQube Games also announced that they will “not release a physical version for PS4” as they “expect significantly less interest [from players] once it became clear that the content is altered.”

As indicated in the above Tweet, PQube Games put up a poll on the subject the next day, though the question presented applies more to the general topic of censored releases than to Aokana specifically.

They asked players what they would do “if you knew a game had altered content on one platform,” with the final leading answer being “buy from other platform” by a large margin.

As of writing, PQube Games has not reversed their cancellation of a physical PS4 release.

This announcement comes on the same day that The Last of Us Part II, which fully (though questionably) depicts intercourse between two characters, released for the PlayStation 4, leading to further questioning of Sony’s strict adult content policy for releases on their platform.

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