Sports Glitches & Madden Bugs on 360?

While I haven’t noticed any major glitches in my couple of days with the 360 version of Madden 08, this guy on Youtube has video evidence of a couple (although that second bug is hardly worthwhile of getting all worked up over). Here’s a reproduction of the bug.

So what gives? Have you seen bugs like this? The only problem I’ve seen is the much maligned number of fumbles and turnovers you see in basically every game you play. I really hope that is adjusted in a patch.

But will it be? One of the hugest problems I see with sports gaming is that, because there is a new version coming out within a year, there is basically NO motivation to fix broken things in a released product. I saw this with MLB 2k7. The outfielders have a horrible tendency to, instead of jumping and climbing up the wall to reach for a catch when you flick up on the stick, they dive. This is a known issue, and when IGN posted the problem to 2K Sports producer Ben Brinkman, he said “I personally think that whole fielding system sucks.” And yet, this year’s game will continue to have this problem.

In non-sports games, where the game is a self contained, finite experience, a patch would be issued to resolve a major problem. But sports titles rarely have significant patches. Anything apart from a few tweaks here and there will be pushed off as a feature in the following version. This “sequels as a means of patching” mindset is a bane on Sports games.

But there’s no end in site, as millions of us continue to buy the game, hoping for a fun experience with a sport we love. I really wish the sports games would extend the support lifecycle to 2 years or so, where major bugs would be worked out, online games would continue to work, and rosters would continue to be updated for 2 years from the release. A bi-annual Madden with a service pack type upgrade in the middle years would be SO MUCH better than the current way things are done. Here’s to hoping somebody at EA figures this out.

Ah the good days..