Fourth Battlefield 1943 Map Unlocks On 360

EA probably knew it was creating some platform drama when it created the Battlefield 1943 "Coral Sea Challenge," which locked up one of that game's four maps on each platform until 43 million kills were earned... on each platform. They essentially created a race situation, with each platform squaring off to get kills. Raw numbers and install bases made it seem like the 360 would have a relatively easy time beating out the PS3 version, though EA managed to make it a little more dramatic by not having enough servers on the 360 side, making that version sort of unplayable for a few days.

But in the end, that didn't hold the 360 base back for long. Today, after five days of straight-up murder, the 360 version surpassed 43 million kills, letting players on that platform play matches on Coral Sea, a planes-only map. The PS3 players made it to 22 million kills and, I guess, will still have to keep killing to unlock Coral Sea for themselves.

Interestingly, EA's been tracking who actually gets the kills, and they've attributed the map unlocking kill to Xbox Live user jkasapi, or "James" from Peterborough, England. That dude will get Battlefield 1943-themed sunglasses, a t-shirt, and custom sneakers. EA says that the lucky killer for the PlayStation 3 version will also win a similar package.

So did this silly challenge get your platform-specific blood boiling? It seemed like a bit of good fun to me, but I'm sure someone on some message board right now is flipping out over something related to this whole deal.