How was BioShock released in Japan?

BioShock arrived in Japan six months after the West, and it arrived properly localised. Publisher Spike released the Xbox 360 edition on February 21, 2008, and the PlayStation 3 edition on December 25, 2008, with a complete Japanese voice dub, not subtitles alone.

At a Spike event in January 2008, covered by 4Gamer, the game's Japanese producer argued the point in public: full Japanese voicing was essential if Japanese players were to absorb Rapture's world, a city that talks constantly, through radios, recordings, and loudspeakers. A text-only port would have muted the game itself.

Then the series changed hands. BioShock 2's Japanese edition came from D3 Publisher under a CERO Z rating, the adults-only band, as its Japanese cover below shows plainly. Sales in Japan stayed small next to the West; legacy chart estimates put the Xbox 360 edition around 50,000 copies, a rough figure best treated as an estimate rather than a count.