Eurogamer

The PlayStation 3 version of fighting game Mortal Kombat – out this week – includes God of War star Kratos as an exclusive playable character. Xbox 360 owners, however, do not get an exclusive character. Why?

The answer is shrouded in mystery.

"Unfortunately, the circumstances didn't allow us to make a 360 exclusive," was all Mortal Kombat boss Ed Boon could say when quizzed by Eurogamer.

"I'm not allowed to talk too much about it, but I can tell you we certainly wanted to do an exclusive for 360, but that's all I can say. It was not a decision we made where we said, oh, let's not do one for the 360."

Xbox 360 owners were given hope that they would see an exclusive playable character in the gory brawler when Twitter accounts associated with Gears of War maker Epic Games offered to chat to Mortal Kombat developer NetherRealm.

"It's funny," Boon continued. "A number of us on the development team have accounts on Twitter. We try to use that as a means to communicate and connect with the players. Our team in particular pays big attention to fans of the game and what they want to see in Mortal Kombat game. So we pay very close attention."

While Boon refused to specify the characters he wanted to include exclusively for the Xbox 360 version, he hinted that NetherRealm discussed the likes of Master Chief and Marcus Fenix.

"Anybody who's really knowledgeable about the Xbox video games, the big titles, names like Master Chief from Halo, Marcus Fenix from Gears of War, and any other Xbox exclusive title, is going to come up in a conversation in talking about it. So clearly we've discussed it.

"But, like I said, it wasn't something we decided, no, we don't want to make a 360 version of a character."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-04-19-mk-dev-wanted-xbox-exclusive-character

Translation: Actually, it was our call, but we just want the hate mail to stop.

Better Translation: We wanted to, but we were being charged more than we would like to use one of the trademarked characters.

even better translation: suck it!

Best Translation: now Microsoft Fans will claim Sony paid for exclusivity, and while they are butting heads with sony Fans they forget about whining.

first off -- master chief or marcus fenix would be stupid in MK, kratos as least makes some sense for the gameplay.

but seriously ... what is so mysterious about this?  money and/or service exchanged hands to get the exclusive content just like when sony got the joker for batman AA.  ms/sony/nintendo all do this ...

kowenicki might need a notorized recipe hand delivered to his house before he believes a developer would have any reason to give certain platform owners extras for any reason other than generocity but the rest of us can see through a glass window...

Or how about: We did come up with an exclusive Xbox 360 character called "The finger."

Nah... MC would be perfect with the energy sword...

This seems to be the best translation to me. Sony wouldn't need to pay to get Kratos in MK, surely. The free boost it would give MK means, if anything, Kratos should have cost NetherRealm money, not the other way around. But, given Sony would be getting an exclusive character in the game, both sides win without any cost to either party. I'd be fairly surprised  if Sony bought exclusivity here.

On the other side, why would Epic give Gears content for free? Only for money, and I can't see NetherRealms wanting to pay. As for Master Chief? I dunno. Perhaps one or both parties thought he would be a bad fit (and he would), or perhaps MS asked for money to have him included (after all, there is a lot of Halo fans -- including the Chief could really boost sales, or so they could argue).

sounds about right I guess. sad really tho for the fans..dunno wtf media made article after article hinting the possibility of an exclusive karakter