While the upcoming patch for Madden has been looming for a while, there wasn’t much expectation that NCAA Football 08 would receive one as well. Despite that one was released just recently (under the radar) for the PS3 and seems likely to be out for the 360 in the near future. I am hoping to get word on the status of the 360 patch soon.

Unfortunately some of the major issues such as the depth chart button lag were not dealt with, however the gameplay will be affected significantly due to the adjustments. Here is what the patch takes care of:

Gameplay: Fumble Chance has been tuned to more realistic values and logic. Fumbling has been tuned to occur during more realistic scenarios such as big hits and collisions.

Gameplay: Defense Secondary aggressive coverage has been addressed. Defensive players AI has been better tuned for only certain percentile of defensive backs have the ability to make aggressive moves that are effective.

Gameplay: Pass Lead Tuning on Lob passes has been improved.
The user has the ability to lead receivers with lob passes now.

Apparently, e-mails have been flying and discussions are currently being held at the game’s development studio, EA Tiburon, as the NCAA team is trying to determine whether the patch, which fixes various gameplay issues such as the number of fumbles and defensive backs reacting to (and intercepting) passes that they shouldn’t be able to see, can be applied to the Xbox 360 version after all.

It was made clear that the team wants to apply this patch to both next-gen consoles, and it was designed expressly for that purpose. After all, the Xbox 360 version has sold more copies of the game than the PS3 and PS2 versions combined, and they took pains to point out that they had no desire to alienate any of their customers, nor do they wish to be perceived as playing favorites.

Saying that “technical issues” were the source of the problem, it’s not a stretch to infer that these issues - which were overcome by the less online-centric PS3, are likely due at least in part to Microsoft’s stringent approval process regarding game updates and patches.

While the notion of release-then-patch is something that was best left in the PC world, there’s no doubt that the ability to improve a game, post-release, is advantageous to consumers - so long as the games are not rushed out the door and studios aren’t selling incomplete games to its customers. Sony and EA got together and solved this quickly - now, we wait to see if Microsoft and EA can do the same, giving its customers the best in-game experience possible.

If not, the largest audience for one of the most successful games of the summer might be left in the dark.