Gamespot has posted up the latest preview of MLB Front Office Manager. As we’ve now hit what is generally the dead spot in the sports gaming year it is nice to have a game to look forward to that splits the difference between now and when the baseball titles are released in the first week of March. In the past January has generally offered an arcade style game such as NBA Street or NFL Tour.

Based on the depth of statistics, you can probably guess the level of off-the field depth in the FOM. As GM, it will be your task to engineer trade offers, develop scouting pipelines, negotiate player contracts, and oversee the development of your young talent. You will need to balance your zeal for trading with the effect trades may have on team synergy and player morale.

Where NFL Head Coach proved a little too intimidating and daunting, the baseball management sim is a more natural fit for fans. This one seems to have a lot of potential especially when it comes to the Online Fantasy League, which as NCAA Football 09 proved with Online Dynasty, a mode such as that can make a game and provide a great deal of value on its own.

• As some of you may have already noticed I have installed a new comment system. This one seems to work well in both Firefox and IE and has replies show up in threaded form. It also allows registered users to give a “thumbs up”  or “thumbs down” to any particular comment. I’ll be looking to find a way to allow for the editing of comments in the near future.

• I’ve started back using Twitter so anyone that would like to follow along here is my address. I’ve also added the last two updates to the sidebar. I’ll be leaving messages on there pretty frequently from now on. In some cases they may relate to the site but in others it’ll just be whatever is on my mind at the time.

• Is there anyone who would like to help create a Pastapadre t-shirt? Shoot me a message through the contact form.

• While the problem with public sharing of roster files in NCAA Basketball 09 continues, the group of volunteers who worked up the rosters at Operation Sports has completed the file. For now those on the 360 would need to send a friends request to the gamertag OperationSports. Once accepted you will be able to download the file out of the locker. After getting the file make sure to remove the gamertag from your friends list. Not sure what the best procedure will be for those on the PS3 yet.

• What non-sports games are you playing right now? I’m about to get into Left 4 Dead and still have to get through Gears of War 2. I’m also looking forward to putting time into Scene It: Box Office Smash and Little Big Planet.

As discovered by ncaaStrategies it appears that the EA Locker 3.0 in NCAA Basketball 09 has a flaw that prevents the ability to share rosters openly from being utilized. Named rosters are still able to be traded but as of now that is only possible directly from the user’s locker, which means you would have to be on their friends list to retrieve it.

What is happening is that the game is identifying some names as being inappropriate, which rejects the file entirely. Unfortunately numerous real player names are being flagged as inappropriate meaning it won’t be possible to get a full named roster via the “public” Locker option. Instead the files have to be uploaded as “private” which leads to the requirement that only people on a person’s friends list would be able to download it.

As CDJ mentions this was not an issue with NCAA Football 09 as there was a disclaimer when downloading rosters that there could be inappropriate names included. So the NCAA team has to lay off the restrictions and add the disclaimer otherwise the EA Locker 3.0 feature is basically useless and not delivering what had been advertised.

As to the progress of fully named rosters there are community members at Operation Sports currently working through them for both the 360 and PS3. However with having to be on a friends list to get them once they are done that is going to make things a whole lot more complicated.

The last update I had concentrated on the emerging story of Anthony Morrow. He had been added into NBA Live 09 through 365 following his first game. Though his ratings now can be identified as being far off from accurate (I couldn’t make a shot with him) the feature did get him in immediately after his first appearance. At the time 2K9 did not have him in the game however the latest roster update has added him in. That made it 10 days from the time Morrow first appeared to when 2K9 had him in their game. That may not be ideal but it certainly represents a huge improvement over the roster updates provided by either NBA title until this year.

A new element coming into play with 365 is the shot and impact streaks. The last 10 games are factored into whether a player is hot or cold and the impact they are having on the team. Now that there have been enough games played this season the streaks are up and running in Live. How much they mean within the context of playing Live is still uncertain. Keeping the streaks restricted to the last 10 games though should offer a fairly accurate picture of how a player has been performing recently.

Continue on to see the Top 10 Hot and Cold players and a some examples of individuals and how their shooting or impact have been reflected through the first two weeks of the season.

Read more

While the patch status for NBA Live 09 remains in question, we do finally have the details of what is being included. As expected many of the well discussed gripes such as shot percentages, delay in attempting shot blocks, and improvements to Online Team Play are included.

It sounds as though there are numerous fixes/improvements that aren’t specifically mentioned so we’ll be looking for or coming across them on our own. Hopefully they’ll wipe out the current record and stats in OTP given the changes. I’ll also be checking to see if they fixed the auto-inbounding that was plaguing the mode.

Continue on for the full details explained through a message from the dev team.

Read more

A patch for NBA Live 09 was released this morning for the PS3 and 360. Or was it? According to EA no patch was released, however users of both consoles (including myself) were prompted to download an update. Given the timing it was reasonable to expect that this was the patch that everyone has been waiting on as it was submitted to Microsoft and Sony a couple weeks ago.

I spent a few minutes trying to get a feel for any differences between then and now. As far as I can tell nothing has was changed by this patch. The delay in jumping to block shots as well putting your arms up with the right stick is the same, the high shot percentages seem to be the same, and the menu lag remains. Those are just some of the more noticeable things that I expect will be addressed in the patch…though EA still hasn’t provided any official details on what will be included.

While it has happened before where MS or Sony has released an empty patch by error, it would seem to be quite the coincidence that both did so for the same game at the same time. Also, generally the companies receive at least some advance notice from them as to when patches are going live. In this case no one seems to know what is going on. If there is any more news regarding what this was all about today add an update to this posting.

While roster update #11 only lasted something like a day before disappearing, it was at least out there which makes this week’s update #12 of season. It is expected to be available for download sometime tomorrow. From browsing through it not much jumped out at me other than a couple good players heading to the IR.

Continue on for all the transactions, ratings up/down, contract extensions, and injuries.

Read more

One of the anticipated elements to the New Xbox Experience (NXE) is the ability to install the games to the hard drive. While the disc is still required to be in the 360 while playing, drawing from the hard drive is supposed to put less strain on the hardware as well as decrease loading times as the disc isn’t spinning or being read.

So I thought I would go through and experiment with some of the more recent sports titles to see what if any effect is had by installing the game to the hard drive. The actual installs took about 10 minutes each. I went through a few scenarios with NCAA Football 09, Madden 09, NBA 2K9, and NHL 09. Continue on to see the results.

Read more

While we knew that the authentic schedules were going to be patched in for NCAA Basketball 09 following release of the game there will be more included in the patch. NCAA Strategies has received information on what the patch entails and when it is expected to be out.

The targeted date for the patch to arrive is Thursday December 4th. Incidentally that is the week that the game was originally scheduled to be released before they moved it up by two weeks. Along with the authentic schedules the patch will provide named rosters for online play as well as the ability to edit classic teams.

While those are welcome additions they are basically things that should’ve been included in the first place. At least getting the names back online shows they listened to the community. Whether there will be another patch that attempts to improve the gameplay or address issues that have been discovered (as we’ve seen from the second patches with other titles) remains very much in question.

For a second time I joined Chase from Operation Sports for the Waiver Wire podcast. Amongst the wide array of topics discussed is the emergence of the NBA 2K series as a dominant sales force and what that means, the MLB 2K9 cover announcement, the possible move towards subscription and advertising based gaming, and the good and bad of downloadable content.

Click here to download the show. You can also subscribe to the podcast via iTunes here. Be sure to leave your thoughts on the podcast in the comments.