[doctorhay53]

With sports games, I think it is kind of difficult to add options and game improvements via patch, because when the game comes out, you're already working on the next iteration. You would have to take people off of next year's game to keep working on a game that has likely already sold 75% of the copies that will sell.

However, what the patching process shouldn't be is an excuse to ship a broken product simply because it can be patched later. For instance.....there are some inexcusable problems in NCAA '10. If the game was released 4 years ago, no one would buy it because there are many 'gamebreaker' issues that are there right out of the box. These problems could not have been fixed for a game that came out 4 years ago on last gen. The game would have been given a 5 out of 10 on most ratings simply for the glaring bugs. Due to the patching process, the game can come out in its current, inexcusably broken form.

So my opinion on patch philosophy is this:

1) Patching should not be a substitute for a finished product right out of the box
2) Patching should fix bugs that are found once a million people start putting in millions of hours, bugs that we shouldn't have expected them to find in limited testing
3) At least 1 patch should include some minor options and tweaks requested by the gaming community; this patch cannot be expected to contain things like completely new camera angles or stadiums, but small things like 'for the love of god can we have the option to turn auto-picture OFF????!?!?' or 'can you PLEASE make the CPU take a little more time off the clock before a field goal?' Also, small gameplay tweaks should be a MUST in this patch, as people who put hour upon hour into the game get a feel for tweaks that can definitely help.