The Joker’s last laugh at the expense of agitated fanboys

This week seems to be delivering a steady stream of small annoyances to Xbox 360 owners. First the Lode Runner XBLA pricing fiasco (that will warrant its own post shortly) and now the leaked news that the PS3 version of the very promising upcoming game Batman: Arkham Asylum will have exclusive challenge levels – aside from the main story – with Joker as a playable character, available through a free download.

I’ll be the first to admit that yes, I am jealous, since I don’t own a PS3. However, what really caused my knee-jerk reaction was the lack of any announcement about the possibility of exclusive content for the Xbox 360 version of the game. Especially when Sony might not be the only one getting some exclusive goodies.

The whole thing seems to hinge on some very vague wording in many places. On Sony’s PlayStation Home ad billboard (by the way, kudos for using the virtual world to leak information before the official announcement – now gamers will definitely hang out in there more than before) it says:

Play as the Joker in the exclusive Joker challenge maps available only on the PlayStation 3.

Destructoid has a short confirmation from Eidos and Warner Bros., saying:

Yes, this will be exclusive to the PlayStation 3, and The Joker will be available as a free download when the game is released. It appears he'll only be playable in the game's Challenge Maps.

However, most places aren’t mentioning that GameStop has their own pre-order bonus for the game:

Reserve Batman: Arkham Asylum and receive a GameStop Exclusive in-game Villain Challenge Map.

Interestingly enough, poor Amazon didn’t get to have any pre-order or bundled goodies of their own, which they frequently manage to secure with hyped releases like this.

Based on the leaked Home ad and the tiny official blurb available so far, most people are upset that the Joker will be a PS3 exclusive character. That’s certainly quite possible, and if true, I’ll be a little sad as an Xbox 360 owner. Sure, you can’t play him through the main story, but still, he is the villain of the game, one of Batman’s most relentless enemies, an iconic character in that universe, and nobody can forget the late Heath Ledger’s rendition in last year’s The Dark Knight. Ironically, the Home ad – which matches the Joker’s favorite hair color – uses bright green lettering, usually a hallmark of the 360. That’s why I thought Xbox gamers got Yoda in Bandai Namco’s Soulcalibur IV. Then again, the PS3 got the villain for that game as well – Darth Vader, although that still stuck to the color scheme of the respective consoles.

Anyway, so one interpretation is that Joker as a character is exclusive to the PS3. But then what villain is the GameStop bonus (available for both platforms) referencing? The IMDb entry for the game lists Killer Croc, the Riddler, Harley Quinn, and Victor Zsasz as remaining adversaries. None of those characters are even close to matching the Joker for sheer nastiness or infamy. Of course, GameStop will probably gladly take whichever characters are left. It’s interesting to note that their bonus listing doesn’t mention the specific villain by name. It’s possible that they don’t know yet or that there is an embargo on the fact that some villains from the main story are playable in the challenge maps.

Of course, another way to look at it is that the Joker - “available as a free download when the game is released” – still is the villain, even for the extra challenge levels. And the respective maps may be exclusive to Sony and GameStop, but the character is not.

After all, without a movie or DVD tie-in this year, a large portion of the game’s sales will be to fans of the characters and comic books, and stacking the deck with the Joker in one corner would heavily influence the platform of choice for gamers who own both. Since Sony apparently doesn’t pay for such exclusives, it would mean that Eidos/Warner are pretty publicly backing the console with the generally smaller install base, all on their own.

At the end of the day, there are really several possibilities and we don’t know enough to form an (outraged) opinion yet:

1. The Joker character is exclusive to the PS3. That means GameStop has their own villain for both platforms. The 360 may or may not have a third one. The PS3 version wins, because gamers can get the best one of the villains plus potentially a second one.
2. The Joker character is the shared playable villain, but individual maps are exclusive to Sony and GameStop. The 360 may or may not have its own. Everybody generally wins.
3. The 360 and PS3 (and maybe GameStop) initially each have their own villain, but they all later become available through paid DLC, like Yoda and Darth Vader (who were both also initially “exclusive” to their respective consoles) in Soulcalibur IV. Everybody still generally wins, even if parity takes some time.
4. There has been no word on exclusive content for the 360 version because there really isn’t any at all. No exclusive characters or maps. Eidos (and/or Warner or maybe even Square Enix now) and Microsoft didn’t come to friendly (or financially satisfactory) terms, so the 360 version gets penalized. Sales of the game will probably end up reflecting this, shifting in the PS3’s favor.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see as more information becomes available. It just bothers me that Sony and GameStop are parading exclusive content, and there is no word from anybody about the 360 version. If Xbox gamers don’t get the Joker, but, say, Harley Quinn instead, then fine. If the Joker is a timed exclusive like the New Goblin in Spiderman 3 (also initially an exclusive character on the PS3, but later a premium download on the Xbox), that’s also fine. But if the 360 version ends up being the only gimped one of the two (three?), then that frankly sucks.

And yes, I’m sitting here at night writing a freaking essay about a possibly exclusive downloadable character in a video game. But it’s Batman, so it’s important, damn it!