No Gears of War for Germany

The German ratings board has declined to award Gears of War with a rating, meaning the game cannot be sold in Germany.

You may recall that USK, the German ratings board, did the same thing earlier this year with Capcom's Dead Rising, and the result is bad news for German gamers. It's also bad news for Microsoft who has now lost its big winter release - there won't be a censored version released at a later date either.

Microsoft has decided that the changes that would need to be made to the game in order to get a rating would rob it of a lot of important features and therefore will not be submitting a new version. It would also make it hard to guarantee that the German version would work online with other versions.

Gears of War will not suffer the same problems in the UK, where it will arrive on November 17.