More News on NCAA Basketball 09

Readers of the site were first to know that a potential release date change was coming for NCAA Basketball 09, and only a matter of hours later it was confirmed. The game is now set to release on Tuesday November 18th.

Along with that news came some information about the game itself. Real schedules in dynasty mode, something that had been missing from the March Madness series, was guaranteed to be in this year. However now we find out that the game will ship without them but they will be added via free downloadable update on or soon after the game releases.

Giving the timing of when we received the data, we were not able to get “real schedules” into the finished product. We know this is not what we promised during the community day, and we are sorry we let you guys down on that one. However, we know how important it is to have these schedules in the game, so we will be providing the real schedules as a free update shortly after launch. Given our accelerated ship date, we can’t guarantee it will be there week 1, but we’ll push to get it up asap.

The move up in release date wouldn’t have any affect on the final product, it’s done and ready to go so there would be no point in holding it back. They had all year to get the schedules in so that one doesn’t make much sense to me, though timing wise the change in release date would not be at fault for that.

I just can’t help but feel as though the game is going to be an empty experience. Granted it sounds like the gameplay is going to deliver (finally) but with the lack of an Online Team Play and Be a Pro modes, no names for online games, and now not even having real schedules included at ship I’m not sure how well the game will be received and if it will provide much if any longevity. The game doesn’t even have a page on EA Sports World which concerns me. A demo is expected however when it will arrive is unknown.