You have to hand it to Electronic Arts on Battlefield 3's launch: when EA borks something up, they really go for the gusto. As if botched Betas, shadily dealt-out review code, broken Xbox 360 servers on launch day, and hilariously bonkers nonsense like this weren't enough, now we can go ahead and add randomly missing console-exclusive bonuses to the endlessly burning tire fire of rage that EA refuses to stop pouring gasoline on.
You may remember waaaaayyyyyy back in June at a little industry get-together called E3, that EA, by way of Sony's Jack Tretton, announced that all PlayStation 3 copies of Battlefield 3 would come with an extra-special bonus game packed onto the Blu-ray disc in the form of Battlefield 1943. Up until the game's launch yesterday, no one had any reason to believe that Battlefield 1943 wouldn't be appearing as a bonus in the PS3 version. Then yesterday happened, and suddenly it was not there.
Responding to this understandable query by the confused masses, EA's poor, unfortunate community manager in charge of Battlefield 3 was forced to take to Twitter and announce that...no, I can't re-type it. It's too painful.
In lieu of 1943 being available on disk for PS3 customers, EA has made all BF3 expansions available early to PS3 customers.
Right.
So, just to recap, instead of a free game that had been previously promised to be included on the disc, PlayStation 3 owners will be granted the first opportunity to buy more Battlefield 3. Is anyone else feeling a little like Will Ferrell at the end of Zoolander right now?
The issue is less that EA had to go back on including Battlefield 1943 as part of the package--dumb things happen during development, and it's understood that sometimes things don't work out as you expect--but the fact that nobody notified consumers of this fact prior to the game's launch is straight-up horrendous. At any time, any time, during the PR cycle for Battlefield 3, someone at EA could have piped up and said, "Oh, that was just craaaaaaazy uncle Jack at Sony getting loose of his bed straps again and talking crazy talk! We don't have Battlefield 1943 on this disc!" Instead, they let people continue to believe that a console-exclusive bonus existed when, in fact, it did not.
If you can't see something deeply, deeply wrong with that, I think you may be beyond help.