NCAA Football 08: Disk Unreadable, Experience Unbearable, Oversight Inexcusable…

by Drake Hess on September 19, 2007 at 6:52 pm

Lets get one thing straight right off the bat, I love college football and this years NCAA 08 makes many improvements in the realm of gameplay. However, that said there is no excuse for the lack of a mid game save feature when your game spurts out a “disk unreadable” error on a fairly consistent (and frustrating) basis.

I can live with the hang up in between plays as the in game stat animations load. I can even stomach the game freezing up after nearly every play before the snapshot feature loads up. What I can not live with is the game constantly spitting out a disk unreadable error causing all game progress to be lost.

I thought it may have been my disk, so I exchanged it … three times, each time for an “in store copy” which I was told was the display copy. I could not get a Gamestop to give me a brand new copy.

I felt it was important to do more research before I wrote about it, so I went out and bought another copy of the game, brand new, out of the box. I was able to get a good four games or so in before it did the same thing. I tried it in another 360 and was eventually greeted by the same error.

I put a call in to EA Tiburon and have yet to receive a response regarding the issue. Microsoft has some troubleshooting documentation on their site that we tried as well, however none of the methods resolved the matter.

Some believe this issue is due to the way the game was programmed, others believe it is a result of the way the game is pressed/manufactured and sent to market. Either way it is unacceptable. NCAA Football is not the only game on the 360 that has been noted for doing this, however it is frustrating that more research is not being done to remedy the problem.

If you have had a similar problem or a solution you would like to share feel free.

Tags: EA-Sports, NCAA-Football-2008

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Kevin J

Blue Dragon does the same exact thing, quite frequently. Electronic Arts isn't the greatest bunch of developers but this doesn't surprise me at all.

ULAn o

I have blue Dragon ...and soo far ive been lucky on the third disk and no Errors yet...perhaps its the xbox? yea he tried in on more than one but this is 360 where talkin about you have to try it on several

JW

This issue happened on several of the 07 version of EA Sports Games - NCAA Football 07, NBA Live 07 and March Madness 07. No other games had the problem. I tried multiple copies of each game, but the issue remained even though each disk was brand new. I ended up getting my Xbox 360 repaired under warranty, but the issued remained. Eventually Microsoft sent me a replacement 360 and I haven't had the problem with any game since I received the replacement 360. Knock on wood.

FireBoxSniper

@JW,

So you think there is something in the old model of the 360 that Microsoft has addressed in thier new replacements that they arent making the general public aware of? Like maybe a really cheap ROM that causes disc errors?

FBS

chiefconcern

I also had this problem. I had my xbox sitting vertical and when I received this error I put my xbox horizontal and it worked. I recently set my xbox vertical again and have not received this error.

JW

I don't have a reliable theory about why this happens. I can only speak to my personal experience. It seems like I tried everything, but the only thing that fixed it was getting a replacement 360.

Hitta904

i have the same problem with not only ncaa 08 but madden 08 as well

Zach

I had this problem and took the disk out to examine it (turns out this same problem occured with my copy of fight night round 3 and the world cup version of fifa when the 360 first came out). All three occasions there was a white ring around my disk about the size of a miniDVD. All three occasions i had my xbox vertical. I simply wiped the disk down with my monster screen cleaner cloth in a center-to-edge fashion , set the xbox horizontal and let 'er rip. No problems since.

Chad Lakkis

Hey guys,

Thanks for the feedback. This story has received many responses on other sites linking to it. Two that I thought may help are posted below...

"I did see a post on the Xbox forums a few months back that linked to a modding site that talked about how to adjust the drives laser. They were claiming that calibrating the laser would solve these problems. But they didn't explain why it happens only to certain games."

Igniter - N4G.com

"the problem happens sometimes when the game gets hot....use to happen with my older model that RROD often. use too happen in oblivion too.....with the replacement xbox, I haven't had it happen but twice playing madden...and i also tore the back off my entertainment center out for more air in the back, so that might of been the problem. I had the game glitch problem with tiger woods 08 also but it was patched and hasn't glitched ever since."

Snukadaman - N4G.com

Mad-

Ravi

Well I have many 360 titles but this kind of problem never ocurred usually. This only occured once when my NFS:MW disc got scratched ( I left it out open ), other than in this case it never happened. Infact my FARCRY disc has a lot of scratches and it runs perfectly without any problem in loading time, frame rate or anything else. So I think there might be some problems with the disc itself.

DaveyJ

I haven't ever really had any problems with EA games, but both my Guitar hero II disk and my Call of Juarez disk have given me errors. The only wierd thing is, on GHII it only happens on certain songs and on Call of Juarez it only happens on level 12. But it happens EVERY time on that level and those songs. Neither disk has a single scratch. This leads me to believe there must be some finite step compatability issue within the disks of certain 360 games. If this is the case, a patch should be able to fix it. It shouldn't be the console, right? Right?

Zack

I have this problem with Halo 3, three copies, three disc unreadable errors

Any solutions so far for your case?

Jeff

My NCAA 08 wont even play anymore... the 360 refuses to read it... there are no scratches or anything on the disk... this problem is driving me crazy.. please someone help me.

Chad Lakkis

Jeff,

Not sure if this works or not (it is coming from my eleven year old cousin) but I gave him my review NCAA 08 and he said it was giving him the disk unreadable error as well until he set the quarters to 4 minutes.

He said it stopped giving him the error after that. May be worth a shot. Please get back to us and let us know if it works.

Chad-

Jeff

My game wont even start playing... the xbox just says reading disk when i put it in... one time it said invalid dvd, but other than that nothing has even come up... It works perfectly fine with all my other games... Up until yesterday I just had the occasional freezing problem. I wonder if it has to do with me updating my xbox through xbox live, cause I updated it for the first time in like a year yesterday and when i tried to play the game it would not work.

Chad Lakkis

Jeff,

You may want to call the customer support line. If it is working with every other game and your copy of the game in question is flawless I am not really sure what the issue could be. It may be an issue with the data on your hard drive.

One thing you could try is playing the game with your hard drive disconnected. If that works then it could be an issue with that.

Chad-

Tyler

i dont even get into a game situation. even if i just try to go into anyone of the play modes it screws up. very frustrating saying that i havent even gootten one damn hour out of the game

Rusty

The disc unreadable error happens to me all the time on NCAA 08....every time I turn it on to play its just a random chance on if I'm gonna get through my game or not...It pisses me off so much, its unacceptable

Lewis

FIFA 08 does exactly the same, there isn't a scratch on the disk but all i ever get is This disk is unreadable

Phil

Same problem as everyone else. It started out just freezing up and now the 360 will not even recognize it. All my other games work, but after this issue and going through 2 original Xboxes in a nine month period before the 360 came out, I am done with Microsoft and EA Sports. I can think of other things to spend my money on that don't end up with me being pissed off.

kallop

Same issue and then some... i had the red ring... then got my new xbox... all excited... and I now my NCAA wont plya anymore due to this damn disc error. The testing that EA does for ncaa and for madden is UNACCEPTABLE. I guess when you get a monopoly on something it doesn't matter the quality of your product... Gee... and I thought our economy was set up to encourage competetion and eliminate all non-government monopolies for this very reason!!!! EA sucks and microsoft swallows!!!!!!!!!! Nuff said! I just wish there was an alternative for my crackbox addiction!!!!!

Rusty

So what does everybody think? Is it the game's fault or the 360's fault for the disc unreadable error during ncaa 08?

Eric

I've had a problem the last couple of days with my NCAA 08 I would be playing and it will just go checkerboard, so I took the game out, and the Xbox works but the hard drive wasn't registering, I reconnected and got the hard drive to work but then while playing NCAA08 the problem happened again now my hard drive wont come up

Spencer

I agree with you 100 %.
And it is only Ncaa that seems to do that.
Both in 07 and 08 its been pissing me off...

Will

Yea.. this is rather frustrating.. i took my game to a friend's house and played it there, but i still had the same problems. i rented a game to see if it was just my game and neither of them worked

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