Nintendo may have reigned supreme in U.S. hardware, but it’s the Xbox 360 that enjoys the best selling software for the month of July, as NCAA Football 09 moved close to 400,000 copies on Microsoft’s platform. Wii Fit wasn’t far behind, as it helped 369,000-plus Wii owners become that much healthier.
NCAA Football had a strong showing on the PlayStation 3 as well, garnering a fifth place showing in the top ten, beating out the month’s other new debut, Soulcalibur IV. Namco Bandai’s fighter sold better on the 360 than it did on the PS3 to the tune of about 60,000 units. With only three days of sales accounted for in July, 375,000 or so copies sold isn’t too shabby.
One top ten surprise, Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution, adds a bit of variety to the NPD best sellers, which are after the jump.
Message boards and forums are livid at EA and NCAA Football 09, whose problems apparently go well beyond EA Locker corrupting the roster files. AOL Fanhouse went through the boards and made a full accounting, and it’s grim.
• Sliders are borked. The CPU sliders do nothing. Human sliders affect both CPU and human. Level playing field! • Online dynasty mode is borked. It sometimes simulates games that have been played by humans. • Super-sim is borked: Using it to fast-forward through a blowout can add many more plays than would actually happen in the football game, and produce extremely lopsided final scores. • Kick returns are borked. • The new player speed model is causing huge problems with pursuit angles by CPU-controlled players.
About two weeks ago we reported that this is crunch time for the independent roster editors for NCAA 09, which goes to the street today. But as this video — of NCAA 09′s roster screen — shows, using a third-party edited file can can corrupt a team’s depth chart and its overall rating, if not delete the team entirely, until EA can patch the game.
Get a taste of this year’s football action a bit early with EA’s NCAA Football 09 demo, now available for the Xbox 360. New features in the latest version include the new, more-realistic Break Away Animation Engine promising more control and fluidity on the field, a new college-specific tackling engine, more realistic sidelines, and – best of all – user-influenced mascots after touchdowns. Joy!
The demo weighs in at 1.44 GB, one meaty chunk of collegiate football action to tryout before the full game hits next month.
Demo: NCAA Football 09 [Xbox Live's Major Nelson]
EA Sports launched NCAA Football ’09 at a gala event in New York on Friday night, taking advantage of so many college stars being in town for the next day’s NFL Draft. As AOL Sports’ Fanhouse pointed out, the game is touted as the “best-looking yet” while, to a trained eye, is just now getting around to putting in the kind of atmospherics that made NCAA Football 2002-2004 such a joy to play.
