Its been a while since Tales of Vesperia came out for the Xbox 360. In fact, that was one of the driving forces behind my purchase of the system last year. I figured if the Talesfranchise, of all things, is going to the 360, I need to buy one for fear I miss out on great JRPGs. Oddly enough, I haven’t played the silly game yet. However, I found it cheap on Amazon the other day, and it should be arriving in the mail any day now. It’ll give me something to do while my wife is out of town.

If I had never purchased my 360, I’d be glad for the day that the game hit the PS3, which it will be doing before too long. In fact, a demo of the PS3 version just went up on the Japanese PSN not long ago, new playable character and all. Wait, what? New playable character? That’s right, with the re-release on the PS3 comes many new additions and improvements. I’m not sure how I feel about this, honestly. Why does the PS3 get content that owners of the original Xbox 360 version not get? Will 360 owners ever get that content?

Here’s what should happen – any changes to the story, game play or mechanics (like bug fixes or whatever) – should be patched into the 360 version free of charge. I will compromise on the next part and say that any new characters and outfits given for “free” when you buy the game on the PS3 should be put up as cheaply-priced DLC for the 360 version. Truth be told, that DLC should be free since 360 owners usually paid just as much as the PS3 owners for the game, but I’ll concede that there can be a slight charge to the DLC. Anyone who is madly in love with the game would buy the DLC without much thought anyway.

I’m not a fan of the practice of giving one system different or exclusive content compared to another system – especially between the PS3 and the 360. I hated what they did with Soul Calibur IV, and I dislike re-releases of “exclusive” titles a year later with “bonus” content like Bioshock and, now, Tales of Vesperia. Its great that they’re adding more value for your buck to the game – that’s not the problem. The problem is giving one system content that the other one doesn’t get, for no particular reason. Perhaps they think that since the Xbox 360 players got the game a year earlier, the PS3 players should get something for the time they waited. Sure, if Square-Enix adds loads of exclusive content to the 360 version of Final Fantasy XIII to make up for the past fifteen years of Sony exclusivity, then I might let it slide. But, that’s not exactly going to happen.

I’m not a “fanboy” of one system over another – if anything I’ve become more accepting of the various systems in the last few years. I just think it’s a crappy move on the part of whoever is behind this to offer content on one system and not another, especially a year after the original release. Who knows, it may very well be announced that all this stuff will be provided as DLC for the 360 version. That would be cool, but I won’t hold my breath.