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So, what about it ? Shogi got nothing to do with (international) chess.

Shogi is pretty different than chess with many different rules.

Well look here, now is has gone to a different category. 

he/she/it is ;)

That is really weird. Shogi might be a bit different from international Chess, but it obviously is a variant of the grand game of Chess. A very popular variant, I might add, with 10-100 times as many players world-wide as Chess960.

It certainly does not belong in the off-topic section, which is more for people who want to talk about cars, swimming pools or the weather.

I would say that it belongs with weather talk. Go to shogi dot com if you want to talk about shogi.

And go to chessvariants.org if you want to talk about Chess variants. At least that one exists...

But that cannot be the reason that chess.com decided to have a forum section on Chess variants. Now that we have this section, it seems more logical to put talk about Chess variants there, rather than in the off-topic section.

Chess variants considered as chess variants on this site does not have new pieces.

Then you are apparently completely unaware on what is typically posted in this forum section...

No, shogi is not a variant of chess, like French is not a variant of Italian for example.

In contrast to what some people claim, Shogi is a variant of Chess, just like the game we play on chess.com is a variant of Chess. FIDE rules are most certainly not the 'original' form of Chess; the rules have changed over time, and the game was already called Chess long before the FIDE rules were adopted. International Chess is therefore known as the 'Mad Queen variant of Chess'.

The rules of Chess did not evolve the same way in all cultures, however. This is why we nowadays have Japanese Chess, Chinese Chess, Thai Chess and 'international' (actually Western, or more aptly: 'imperialistic') Chess. They are often referred to as 'regional variants'.

Defining characteristics of Chess (which, for instance, rules out games like Checkers, Go or Domino) are:

* Played on a 'board' (usually flat 2-dimensional) of 'cells' (usually squares) that can be occupied by a single piece.

* Each side has pieces of many different types

* Pieces (usually just a single one) can be moved from one cell to another during the players turn, according to a prescription depending on the piece type

* When a piece enters a cell occupied by an opponent piece, the latter is removed ('replacement capture')

* One piece (type) is designated 'royal', and capture of that piece (sometimes foreseeable, unavoidable capture) decides the game

Defining 'Chess', however, is a bit like defining life: there is no simple set of rules that satisfactoraly includes all and excludes the obviously unwanted stuff. This is typical for systems that evolved, where 'family ties' often count more than actual properties. E.g. it is debatable whether 'Suicide Chess' is actually a Chess variant: there is no royal piece, so strictly speaking it is not. But because it is so obviously derived from Mad Queen, using the same board, piece types, initial setup etc., it is usually considered such. But in general it holds that when you lack one of the mentioned properties, you'd better resemble a recognized game that does have all the properties very much.