Unavailable Mega Man and Pac-Man Characters on Street Fighter X Tekken Disc for Xbox

Over the last several months, Capcom has endured plenty of fan backlash over their practice of storing content on their discs and then charging a fee to unlock it as “downloadable content.” While there isn’t much practical difference between paying to download it and paying to unlock it, many gamers have called foul with having to, essentially, “pay twice” for stuff that’s already on the game disc, since the whole idea behind DLC is that it’s content that couldn’t fit into the main game.

According to a post on SiliconEra, the Xbox 360 version of Street Fighter X Tekken—which drops on July 31—will continue the practice that fans love to hate, permanently locking out the Mega Man and Pac-Man characters that are on the disc. The two characters were included in the PlayStation 3 version of the game as exclusives, but they’re still on the disc itself in both versions.

Said the game’s producer Tomoyaki Ayano:

“Unfortunately for Xbox 360 users, Mega Man and Pac-Man are exclusive to the PS3 version of the game. Every game has data on it that is unused. In this case, Street Fighter X Tekken for the Xbox 360 did have the Mega Man and Pac-Man data on it. But, we never intended to release these characters on the 360. They are PS3 exclusives and that was our intention from the very beginning. They are not going to be timed exclusives either, they’re PS3 exclusives.”

A post on Eurogamer about the situation includes an official statement from Capcom defending the practice of selling users the ability to unlock on-disc content:

“SFxT has an enormous amount of content, fully developed and available for play and enjoyment immediately on-disc. Given the 38 characters available for full play, as well as multiple play modes, SFxT provides great value for all players from day one.

While Capcom is sorry that some of its fans are not happy about the chosen method of delivery for the DLC, we believe that this method will provide more flexible and efficient gameplay throughout the game’s lifecycle.

There is effectively no distinction between the DLC being ‘locked’ behind the disc and available for unlocking at a later date, or being available through a full download at a later date, other than delivery mechanism.”

Now, I haven’t played a Capcom game that I bought in the store since Super Street Fighter IV, and even that I haven’t played since they gimped Ryu and my brother started kicking my ass online again (I swear, it’s like when it was when I was 11). So this particular issue hasn’t affected me much. But I know it’s near and dear to many gamers’ hearts, and it gets their blood boiling. What does everyone else out there think of this? Do you get mad about this situation, or is it kind of negligible on your list of “things to get mad about”?

Via SiliconEra and Eurogamer