After vowing yesterday a patch fixing a bad multiplayer glitch and punching up the game's AI had been "fast-tracked" for delivery, MLB 2K10's team backed it up today with the arrival of the game's first Xbox 360 patch, sometime overnight.
The patch finally, fully enables bug-free online ranked games against random opponents. If it punched up the manager AI, it didn't do so in My Player. Granted, I threw a six-hit jim dandy against Boston, but it was in Spring Training, and I was batting in the bottom of the 10th. And Hideki Okajima, with a tie game in the eighth, was sent up to hit.
My next game (I'm deliberately holding this guy in the minors for a second season), I went through a five-hit three run fifth inning, lost the lead and yet still hung around until the eighth inning (giving up four runs and 10 hits) until I was replaced. So it seems pitch count is still the governing factor when it comes to assessing your effectiveness and whether you get the hook.
I get that the game wants to let you go long and have the satisfaction of very rare ironman victories, but given how rare it is to crack 100 pitches in the career mode, even on All-Star difficulty, this really needs further tightening for realism.
That said, I did finally get my first hitting goal of laying down a sacrifice bunt. I'd gone two entire seasons, minors and majors, without seeing this once up to now, no matter how few outs I faced with a runner aboard.
As for PS3 players, they're still waiting on their first patch, which may combine the changes applied in this game with ones slated for a second Xbox 360 patch down the line. It's safe to say this is deliberate neglect of the PS3 version, but given the distant second MLB 2K10 finishes to MLB 10 The Show on that console, there's hardly much incentive to hurry, or even a big enough installation base to make it a priority.