Bayonetta 3 Gets A Rating, Grants Hope That It Will Release This Year

The pre-order pages for Bayonetta 3 have been updated with an ESRB rating, potentially solidifying Platinum Games' past assurances that the game will release in 2022. [Update: Not long after this surfaced, Nintendo confirmed Bayonetta's release date is coming in October.]

As spotted by Resetera user vestan, the official Nintendo store page for Bayonetta 3 has been updated with a rating. The poster also took a look on the Way-Back Machine and found that the page had displayed a “rating pending” designation before recently. The listing has yet to appear on the ESRB official website. However, the Nintendo store page details that the game has been rated M for violence, blood and gore, partial nudity, and strong language.

After an initial announcement teaser in 2018, no further information about Bayonetta 3 was released for more than three years. Despite repeated assurances from developer Platinum that development was going well, fans got nervous as the game continued to be a no-show across industry events. A Nintendo Direct in 2021 showed off gameplay footage and promised a 2022 release for the character action game. Nevertheless, the COVID-19 pandemic, along with a host of other factors, caused and is still causing delays of major titles. It was easy to worry that Bayonetta 3 will fall to the same fate.

A rating is not a release date, but it is a sign that some version of the game is out there. Combined with Nintendo’s own assurances of a 2022 release date, it is entirely within the realm of possibility that Bayonetta 3 will appear right on time.