Anybody who has followed Soul Calibur IV - which releases this week, by the way - is well aware of the existence of "Star Wars" characters in the new fighter roster. The Apprentice will be available for both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions, Darth Vader is exclusive to the PS3, and Yoda is exclusive to the 360. But according to recent evidence that may incite a bit of a backlash, are the latter two characters really exclusive?

We already know that both characters will be available via the Store or the Marketplace at some point in the future. This way, Vader and Yoda will be able to battle, which is what most "Star Wars" fans are eagerly anticipating. Of course, you'll have to pay for this privilege, but according to Binge Gamer, that's unfair. It seems that Namco has a habit of including the data on the discs when they're shipped; we only download an unlock key of sorts in order to access it. This means that Vader is actually in the 360 version and Yoda is actually in the PS3 version, but we have to pay to gain access to them. The site mentions Namco's Beautiful Katamari as an example of this practice in the past. Four new levels were available for download, but the download was only 384KB...which doesn't seem to add up to 4 whole new levels. It seems to indicate 384KB worth of unlock codes for something that's already included on the original disc.

And now, it appears they're doing this again for Soul Calibur IV. We can't call this official information, of course, but if it's true, some gamers may be annoyed. If they're going to the trouble of putting it on the disc in the first place, why charge us to unlock it? What's that about?

Source:PSXextreme