Bayonetta 3 gets ESRB rating, suggesting its release isn’t far off

Everyone's favorite witch will likely grace the Nintendo Switch soon.

It’s hard to believe, but Bayonetta 3 might soon be within our grasp.

On Tuesday, Reddit user XDitto made a post regarding the Bayonetta 3 product page on Nintendo’s website. Specifically noting that the game now has an official M rating from the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) for violence, partial nudity, strong language, blood, gore, and in-game purchases. In virtually every case, video games don’t get ratings until they are almost complete. 

So yeah, it’s looking like we could potentially get a Bayonetta 3 release date soon. It should not come as any surprise since Nintendo has been insisting Platinum’s latest will be sometime this year. Don’t necessarily take this as confirmation, though. Noting is official until Nintendo makes an announcement.

This has been a long time coming. Bayonetta 3 was announced during the 2017 Game Awards and didn’t receive additional trailers for years. It wasn’t until the September 2021 Nintendo Direct that we even saw gameplay footage. Well worth the wait, but still, that’s quite a long time to go without any witch time.

Bayonetta 2 came out back in 2014. Meaning that if the third entry releases this fall, it will have been roughly nine years between mainline titles — far too long in the eyes of character-action game fans.

Written by Kyle Campbell on behalf of GLHF.