A while ago, Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 Producer Yosuke Hayashi mentioned that the game had a chance to get a western release in adapted form. Apparently, things seem to have changed, as indicated by a response on the official Facebook page of the Dead or Alive franchise.

"We do not bring DOAX3 to the west and won't have any plan change in the future. Thank you for asking."

If you're curious on the reason for such a firm stance, it's exactly what you would expect:

"Do you know many issues happening in video game industry with regard to how to treat female in video game industry? We do not want to talk those things here. But certainly we have gone through in last year or two to come to our decision. Thank you."

Luckily, the Asian release of the game will have English subtitles, and many (me included) possibly feel that importing a still understandable, and complete, version of the game is still better than getting an "adaptation" which would very possibly be a hatchet job with no respect for the original game.

That said, it's hard not to feel a bitter aftertaste after reading Koei Tecmo's response, and it definitely isn't due to the mangled English.

The house of Samurai Warriors and Nobunaga's Ambition has always created games that didn't exactly cater to the masses, and the recent surge of English localizations coming from them gave fans hope to see another publisher like Xseed and others, ready to bring niche games without suffocating their personality by wrapping them in too much western-friendly velvet.

Hopefully, this will be an isolated case. I guess import retailers will be more than happy to take our money.