EA Sports’ NHL 09 has, like its immediate predecessor, garnered universal acclaim on the Xbox 360 — 11 reviews, no scores below an 80 — from gaming publications around the world (of course, if you’re looking for our perspective, fear not; a Destructoid review is in the works). But the game’s launch last week was marred by widespread reports of disc read errors and freezing with the 360 version of the game.
EA forumites recommended clearing the Xbox 360 cache and disabling the game’s autosave feature, but apparently, those are temporary solutions; the problems eventually rear their ugly heads again. EA’s official response came in the form of a damage control blog post from Marcus Stephenson (EAcrazylegs), EA Sports’ Content & Community Manager for EA Canada titles:
Hello Everyone!
I hope you all are enjoying NHL 09! We’ve received some reports of Disc Read Errors on the XBOX 360 console. I wanted to give you guys a solution to this issue if you are one of the rare few who have it.
Please clear your cache. To do this, you must go to the final blade on the XBOX 360 dashboard and select “memory.” Then please press the “Y” button. Then you need to press the following button combination:
X,X,LB,RB,X,X
I hope this helps!
Of course, users have responded with comments saying that the fix either doesn’t do anything, or only makes the issue go away for a while. There’s no word yet from EA on a patch, but here’s hoping they get one out soon — this is the kind of negative word-of-mouth that could sully the good name of a franchise that’s currently EA Sports’ best. But apparently, the PS3 version is doing just fine so far — if you’re still considering picking the game up, check out the launch trailer above. Are any of you having these issues with NHL 09?
