NCAA Football had a strong showing on the PlayStation 3 as well, garnering a fifth place showing in the top ten, beating out the month's other new debut, Soulcalibur IV. Namco Bandai's fighter sold better on the 360 than it did on the PS3 to the tune of about 60,000 units. With only three days of sales accounted for in July, 375,000 or so copies sold isn't too shabby.

One top ten surprise, Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution, adds a bit of variety to the NPD best sellers, which are after the jump.

01. NCAA Football 09 (Xbox 360) - 397,600
02. Wii Fit (Wii) - 369,600
03. Guitar Hero: On Tour (DS) - 309,700
04. Wii Play (Wii) - 284,000
05. NCAA Football 09 (PS3) - 242,500
06. Soulcalibur IV (Xbox 360) - 218,900
07. Mario Kart Wii (Wii) - 174,500
08. Rock Band Special Edition (Wii) - 165,800
09. Soulcalibur IV (PS3) - 155,800
10. Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution (Xbox 360) - 147,600

Thanks to NPD for providing us with monthly sales data.

• Sliders are borked. The CPU sliders do nothing. Human sliders affect both CPU and human. Level playing field!
• Online dynasty mode is borked. It sometimes simulates games that have been played by humans.
• Super-sim is borked: Using it to fast-forward through a blowout can add many more plays than would actually happen in the football game, and produce extremely lopsided final scores.
• Kick returns are borked.
• The new player speed model is causing huge problems with pursuit angles by CPU-controlled players.

I have the game but I have not played it intensively enough to discover these issues. But if these issues are on the level and, worse, if some gameplay mechanics are not patchable, then it's an almost unforgivable shame. Especially regarding sliders — how can something like that get through QA? How can the super-sim glitch go unnoticed?

And that's to say nothing of the rosters fiasco, for which EA says a patch is coming soon. The roster editing community is equal parts anxious and furious. Two for-profit sellers have put out files that they say are workable, but there is a good chance EA's patch could invalidate any file that predates it, screwing both the sellers and anyone who bought it.

While not Madden, I've always felt NCAA Football was in many ways a better game, because of the deeper catalog of teams and the richer offseason activity of recruiting. But on the next-gen titles it's been a wipeout, starting with versions that had fewer features than the Xbox and PS2 versions, and today still have nowhere near the level of cinematic detail that made it such an immersive game. Following that with a game that has this many bugs is, for devotees of the series, frustrating to no end.

NCAA 09 Plagued with Bugs [AOL Fanhouse]

For roster editors, this is a setback in a niche that has prided itself on near-instantaneous turnaround of complete roster files by the date the game drops. EA, we’re told, is working feverishly on a patch to resolve this problem. But for now, anyone who downloads any roster file should avoid editing it; and those who do choose to edit it should do so offline, as doing so online risks corruption and can crash the game, according to our source.

Conversations with that source tell of an entire, crucial weekend of work essentially lost. One early-bird editor, working off of a devkit and not a final copy of the game, already got a file out through EA Locker. Other roster editors used it as source for their own files, and discovered the glitch. Even though the original author removed that file, there is still some residual viral spread that could affect unwitting others. It and anything going around right now should be considered suspect until the game is patched.

“I was assured that when I release my rosters on Friday there shouldn’t be any problems wth them,” one editor, who demanded anonymity because of a close, unofficial relationship with EA, told Kotaku. A day-three release of a custom roster file was, to now, considered very late. Now it’s the earliest that a reliable file can be produced.

The corruption — and this could be a total shot in the dark — appears to involve nonstandard ASCII characters in certain players’ names in the roster file, such as the infamous A’Mod Ned of Florida International, who memorably waded into a melee between FIU and Miami in 2006 on a pair of crutches. Indeed FIU is one of several teams that go missing, for inexplicable reasons, after changes are made to a roster file that was already created and shared by one editor. While that editor has already removed the file from EA locker, others who downloaded it continue to send it to friends unwittingly.

If you intend to game with custom roster files on NCAA Football, you probably should not use them until you see that the game has downloaded a patch from Electronic Arts.

NCAA 09 Bugs [YouTube]

The demo weighs in at 1.44 GB, one meaty chunk of collegiate football action to tryout before the full game hits next month.

Demo: NCAA Football 09 [Xbox Live's Major Nelson]

Sports Gamer has a first look at the title, too, and it will deliver online dynasty-mode play. You and up to 11 others can compete in a concurrent dynasty simulation that seems incredibly deep, as usual, and for my money is the first real bridging of the worlds of sports simulation and fantasy sports.

Online dynasty will require a league commissioner to marshall all the participants together and tell them to get their games (and assorted activities for a certain week) completed before the sim can advance. This sounds like a job no one would want. EA also is taking a risk by adding in an unpleasant scenario to its game experience: everyone waiting on a guy who had to work late three days in a row, before harshly simming his week for him. But in a small enough league with committed gamers, it could work.

Online dynasty will also feature competitive recruiting, and if you thought the league's recruiting feature was obsessive-compulsive enough playing by yourself, I imagine recruiting against other live gamers will be even moreso.

As for gameplay, there will be more sophisticated ways your quarterback's confidence will soar or tank. For those who hit the power button after throwing a stupid interception returned for a TD, you now have reason to stick around. A minigame will pop up, and if you can identify the defense that picked you off, you'll recover some of that composure.

I like that detail because it shows sports simulations at their best: When they teach you something about the game. Honestly, I have learned more about play-calling, strategy and defense in six years of playing NCAA and Madden. And with incentive to read defenses, I'm sure I'll feel more in control of the game.

And I'm glad to hear EA is, apparently, restoring details — cut scene animations, crowd reactions, pre-game shot, big victory/loss scenes — that made this thing such a model railroad for a gamer who wanted to build an inhabit a world where he was a big-time college coach or player. I haven't read what exactly is coming to the 360/PS3 version. I hope it's everything, and I'm not going to give EA extra credit for putting in something that was part of first-gen games going back to 2003.

But I will buy the title, for the sixth year in a row, hoping it recovers from last year's disappointing 360 version. And if not, I'll be glad to hook up with any of you forming online dynasty leagues.

NCAA 09 First Look [Sports Gamer]