Oh, boy, here we go again.

Apparently, Microsoft knows they don’t have too much in the way of games in 2009. Why? Because they’ve gone and shown us why Sony is probably not wasting their money on marketing: MS does a lot of Sony advertising themselves.

Take, for instance, the latest Microsoft Xbox 360 catalog in Japan. Other than the cute but creepy girl on the cover, it also reads, “Xbox 360 over PS3 if you are picking multi-platform games.” Yeah, maybe because you’re usual trend is to buy out DLC so it only comes out for you, right? Just what full exclusive games are you going to put out this year? What are we going to hear out of E3 to have you run your mouth like that? More games going multiplatform or more exclusive DLC?

It gets better, though. “XBOX Live Arcade system – cheaper than the PS3.” That is, until you count the amount of add-ons you have to pay for in order to get it to the level in which you can treat it as an actual GAMING system (by the end of all of it, you’ll be paying more for it than the Pro system costs). We did the math: it would cost you up to 500-600 bucks to put everything into the bare-bones SKU that the Elite or even the Pro has.

Oh, and don’t worry about Tales of Vesperia, either. That will be “superior” on the 360, according to the catalog, even though an additional playable character will be avaliable on the upcoming PS3 version.

There is some irony in this, though. For one, this is in Japan, where despite a few small surges whenever a JRPG graced the system, it had never gotten a foothold (and where, by the way, the PS3 has beaten the Wii for weeks now). The surges were from first-week of releases for both Star Ocean and, you guessed it, Tales. But only for first week, and then a sudden nose dive. This and Japanese gamers usually doesn’t take kindly to this kind of viral marketing. Yes, Microsoft, you could probably run what could be described as a viral attack campaign against Sony here in the States and get away with it, but not in Japan.

Two, this is the usual thing where all we hear out of a Microsoft sentence is a noun, a verb, and Sony. It happened earlier this year when Aaron Greenberg had diarrhea at the mouth and said that Sony was “hemorrhaging at retail“, and here we are again. Like we said before, Sony doesn’t have to do any advertising because Microsoft is pretty good at getting the Playstation name out there, saying that the PS3 has these games, too.

Third, multiplatform games, MS? Is that all you got to show us in 2009? Wait until E3, where we’ll probably see another huge exclusive DLC deal with a company that doesn’t need the money, or another Playstation 3 exclusive (probably Final Fantasy Versus 13 with the way Square Enix has been assuming the position for you lately) going multiplatform or a PS2 franchise (Kingdom Hearts, see last parentheses quote) going exclusive to the 360? All while polarizing the gamers by doing so.

You know, the people who got this story, PushSquare, said that MS would probably get away with this one, too. But if this was a Sony ad slamming Microsoft, we would never hear the end of it from the mainstream media about how Sony should worry more about their own games and not about the competition. It’s a horrible double standard, and it’s even worse when you have 360 fanboys echoing these things that Microsoft puts out in such ways that it’s downright scary. The media has GOT to call Microsoft out on stuff like this, or else the only thing that gets shown by N4G’s new upcoming “filter” system (which will only get abused just like everything else there has been) is 360 fanboy-approved news from people like GameDaily and Kotaku (though the latter reported about this ad, too).

But…there is always E3, Microsoft. You could bring something to the table. You know, like the exclusive DLC you got from <insert greedy third party developer here> for <insert huge multiplatform game> that you will reveal at E3 09? Oh, wait…I wasn’t supposed to ruin the surprise, just like I wasn’t supposed to say anything about <insert franchise that found its footing on a Sony console and/or a third party PS3 exclusive here> to become multiplatform…damn it, I did it again! Oh well, wasn’t going to be MUCH of a surprise, anyway.