5th Gen Pokémon Black and White Prerelease Censoring

[PokéSwimmer]

So IGN recently posted their review of Pokémon Black and White Versions. Upon reading the review you will notice that some of the images are blurred out and much of the text of the review is covered with these pixels: ▓▓▓. They say it is because they are not "allowed" to show the entire review until the release of the games on Sunday, March 6. This is reminiscent of when Nintendo ordered Serebii and Pokébeach to remove all screenshots and artwork relating to Black and White. Nintendo's "censoring" efforts make me ask: Is it really necessary for Nintendo to attempt to hide this "unreleased" content which can easily be found with a simple Google search?
What are your thoughts on this?

 

[Jay H Christ]

I actually read the review yesterday and was left completely confused. I was wondering if the government had gotten to them or something. But anyways, I'm not really sure what to think. Most people just buy the game straight from Japan or download a Rom and play it there so censoring is kind of pointless.

 

[fenyx4]

So IGN recently posted their review of Pokémon Black and White Versions. Upon reading the review you will notice that some of the images are blurred out and much of the text of the review is covered with these pixels: ▓▓▓. They say it is because they are not "allowed" to show the entire review until the release of the games on Sunday, March 6. This is reminiscent of when Nintendo ordered Serebii and Pokébeach to remove all screenshots and artwork relating to Black and White. Nintendo's "censoring" efforts make me ask: Is it really necessary for Nintendo to attempt to hide this "unreleased" content which can easily be found with a simple Google search?
What are your thoughts on this?

Pretty pointless, if you ask me. All the information is widely available, so it just serves as a major distraction/inconvenience. It also reminds me of how Pokemon.com silhouetted Tepig, Oshawott Wotter, and Snivy prior to the revealing of their English names. I was like "We already know exactly what they look like; you're just obscuring the image! Just show us the English names and get on with it!" Compared to the Japanese site being ahead in much more BW aspects at the time, it was pretty annoying to see Pokemon.com move as if had been affected by 6-month lag or something.

And that whole "picture controversy" by Nintendo back in September was silly as well; eventually, information will circulate in this modern day and age of the Internet, so there's no really point in trying to suppress it in the manner they did. Why stifle the advancement of technology, Zekrom's "domain"? Once the games are released in any part of the world, access to them and their information is fair game, and just blurring out a few words in a review hasn't been effective in hiding much spoilers. >_>


When you've got redacted reviews that cause inadvertent sentences like

narwhal drunk bear conveys the image of melted ice cream sandwiches cigarette butts

, you know there's a problem with what one (or more) of the employees of Nintendo is doing. Poor Samurott/Daikenki.

 

[PlatinumDude]

Blurring out the text is pretty much pointless for a review, IMO, because we already know what the text in the game looks like.

 

[Ho-Oh]

I'm going to censor this thread by locking it! Not really.

Anyways, I like this idea, but I think it would be better off in either Pokemon Gaming Central or Video Gaming. As to why, it's because if it stays here, it's likely to derail into the future consequences of the censoring occuring now, and whether it'll affect future games. And you could use these recent examples with B/W as reasons why you're questioning future censorship.

But yeah, if you want it to be a Pokemon-specific censoring discussion, it'd probably work in PGC, whereas if you want it to be Nintendo's censoring online of everything, then Video Gaming. And also, you could discuss the future of any online information regarding games and whether you can silence what is said online or not. This'd be a great topic to explore, but sadly not here. I'd move to those sections, but since this question was kinda put here, it'd need a lot of rewording to fit in those places. :x