Back about 9 years ago my family received our first PC. I can’t remember much, but it was a shitty Packard Bell or something like that. At around this time I was a very big hockey fan, so my parents thought it would be a good idea to get me NHL ’99 for Christmas. I instantly fell in love with the game, playing it day and night. I later purchased both NHL 2000 and NHL 2001 for the PC the following years. I took a break from the PC side of the NHL series with the 2003 release, which I got for the PS2. Now NHL 2003 wasn’t a bad game by far, but it was just missing that feeling that the PC series always had.
I returned to the PC with NHL 06, and I fell in love all over again. I eagerly bought NHL 07 and…had to check to make sure I hadn’t loaded up 06 by accident. There were very few improvements, which left me dissapointed, yet I was still able to enjoy the game. I then purchased NHL 08…and yet again I received NHL 06/07 with minor improvements.
Now after this I came across a demo for NHL 09 on the 360, and wow, this was what I was waiting for. Amazing graphics/animations, an awesome control scheme, the new “Be a Pro” feature, this game had it all. This time I rented the game, knowing better than to put my full trust into EA Sports again. I brought the game home and began to play. Not long after starting the game, I was greeted with “Can’t read this disc. It may be scratched or dirty. Clean the disc with a soft cloth and try again.” So I followed the orders of my 360 and checked for scratches. No scratches, and oddly enough no dirt either. Still, I cleaned it and re-inserted it into my 360 hoping for the best. I managed to play for a little before, yet again, getting the same message. In frustration I hammered my inquery into google, hoping for a solution. I found that this had happened to many people, and for some cleaning the cache worked fine. So, I cleaned my cache and loaded up NHL 09 again. Guess what happens next, yeah, I got that god forsaken message again. It then donned on me that maybe saving the game to my HDD would work. Believing myself to be a genius I watched as it installed until about 37%, which is when I got the message again! This happened with every copy I tried, and I soon gave up. To this day EA Sports has still not released a patch of any sort to fix this problem.
So my question is, what the fuck EA Sports? I can understand the PC versions of the NHL series falling behind due to piracy, but why this? What is your explanation for shipping a large amount of broken games over 4 months ago, and still not having a patch? Why is it that you just try to ignore the problem as if it will go away? This is pathetic, I don’t know what you have planned for this coming September, but if it’s anything like the previous installment in the series, you will be losing a longtime fan. In fact, many longtime fans. I can’t be the only one.
I got my ps3 july after launch, and just recently got my 360 (about a month). I now find myself playing 360, more over my ps3, by more I mean a lot. I’ve been on my ps3 roughly 3 times, and that was just to play call of duty with friends. Now i began to ask my self why?, is the hardware better? NO, are there better games? No, the reason why its more compelling is the software. Its a step above ps3’s software, ps3’s menu while organized is boring and bland, the friends list pales in comparison to the 360’s. They don’t have a party system or private chat. The psn store, while it looks good, still doesn’t match up to the marketplace and qore, while it does have cool things like theme’s and demos, still isn’t as nice and easy to use as xbox insider. What can sony do to fix’s this? Revamp the menu and get rid of the psp style, use the avatars you make on home to represent you and your friends on the friends list. Make a party feature as well as private chat and turn qore into its own section on the menu. Split the psn store with the movies having their own section in the menu and as well as games. With these problems fixed my time, spent on my consoles could end up only decided by the games they put out. What do you think please leave comments, we would like to hear from you! 
The Gamers Den 