I dunno how many other have been thinking this, but I haven’t seen this put out in the open and it should be discussed. The norm is to ban console exclusive characters, but five is an awful lot and while 4/5 of them are kinda jokish there’s no reason to assume they’re going to be bad or otherwise less worthwhile inclusions than the normal characters and with five total characters on the line surely at least one will be good. We also know that the Xbox360 version has absolutely nothing in compensation; it’s a flat out worse version of the PS3 version (if it’s like all other Capcom fighters and the gameplay is very close to identical). We should consider what we gain from following established trends here.
It seems to me that it would make more sense to allow the five characters and just declare the Xbox360 version non-tournament standard. I say this as a 360 owner whose general position on the console wars has always been “Sony’s stuff is lame” so it’s not even a matter of personal preference for consoles. I just don’t see what we gain by banning so many characters to support an alternate version of the game; it seems like we could be playing a much “bigger” game by just treating this game like the PS3 version is the only one. Lots of older fighting games had specific console ports that were considered non-standard so it wouldn’t even be unprecedented even if the reason (more characters instead of different mechanics) would be. It sucks for people like me who only own Xbox360, but it seems like a no brainer community decision to want to play the version of the game with five more characters and like something that deserves serious consideration. I have a feeling this proposal won’t be considered that great by a lot of people, but I just see the cost-benefit of following tradition versus picking a single standard version weighing pretty heavily toward picking a single standard version right now. If we are going to just make the PS3 version the only standard version though, it makes the most sense to decide that now so people know before the game comes out not to buy the 360 version. Thoughts?