It was just a short while ago that we heard of a few Xbox 360 stalwarts that were making cameos in Epic’s online fragfest Unreal Tournament 3 for PS3, and it looks like it’s going even further. Marcus Fenix, Master Chief and Spawn will now see the likes of Samus Aran join their ranks. Nintendo’s very own FPS juggernaut is now a fully realized, playable character in UT3. Let’s just hope that the big N’s lawyers are as cool about the free promotion as the Microsoft representative was…

I’ve tried the character model out first hand and it’s strikingly well done. The helmet could be a little smaller, but other than that it’s a damn fine effort that I’ll be having fun with for a good long time. With UT3 getting so much post-release love from modders, I can’t wait to see where this title’s sales numbers land when all is said and done. The option to add mods to the console version was a stroke of genius on the part of Sony and Epic and I will be very interested to see what kind of options the Xbox 360 version will have in terms of independent modding. I can only cross my fingers and hope that there will be a plethora of free mod downloads available on LIVE, because if not, the PS3 version could see a spike in sales around the same time the competing version is released. Only time will tell.