LogFAQs > #974998307

Link and Spawn absolutely helped with the brand recognition. Less so Heihachi since Tekken fans probably already knew about Soul Edge/Calibur.

But yeah, the console exclusivity thing itself helped a lot for getting people to know what SoulCalibur even is.

There are some similar examples of games getting console-exclusive characters.

Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing had playable Banjo & Kazooie and Avatars for the Xbox 360 version, and the Wii version had playable Miis.

And then for Mortal Kombat 9, Kratos was exclusive for the PlayStation versions.

Anagram posted...

Even when games get released on multiple consoles today, they still don't get console exclusive content themed for each platform.

Other than minor cosmetics, there's a good reason for that. In a competitive scene, like fighting games, console exclusive stuff tends to get banned.