Why is it that...

Nine times out of ten (scientifically not proven) when I have a game crash (re: lock up) my Xbox 360 it's a 2k game? I've never had Rock Band or Fable 2 or Left 4 Dead crash my console. Madden -as irrelevant as it is to my existence- has never crashed it. No, it's always a 2k sports game.

Now, maybe there's some funky environmental factor. Maybe it's a fluke of biblical proportions. Maybe the Norse god Loki is just having some fun. But -all of a sudden- every time I try to load my MLB2k9 franchise my console locks up such that my only recourse is to manually power it off and turn it back on. I've tried it three straight times now and am ready to give up this franchise as lost. I have three different franchises saved to my 360 right now, two were for simming and the third, the hosed one, was for playing on the field. I go to the load screen, select the franchise, confirm I want to load it, even get a franchise loaded successfully screen, but at that point I remain stuck on the load screen and nothing I do with the controller changes a thing.

This sort of console crashing disaster has been an on and off trait of various 2k sports games for as long as I can remember. Frankly, I'm tired of it. Unlike PCs, which can be a nightmare to develop for, consoles are a closed platform. There is absolutely zero excuse for this sort of thing to happen. Ever.

As it happens, I don't really care that much about losing this franchise. I only had four (successfully) completed games invested in it (discounting the two on-field crashes... oi). But I think about this happening to the dude who's on year 4 of a franchise or the guy who's manually played 150 games of a season and I think about how pissed off I would be. It's not hard to imagine because I've been there before with 2k games. (Anyone remember the varied convoluted sequences of events that could wreck your College Hoops franchise a few years ago?)

For the sake of anyone who might be buying this game I'm wracking my brain to think about what I might have done differently with this franchise that I didn't do with the other two that could lead to this crash. The only thing I can think of, and I'm not seven sure it's true, is that I didn't use the Quit option on the franchise menu before exiting on last session. I think I have with the other two. Not positive, but it's something to try. If I'm able to confirm that, I'll let you all know. But I have very little time between now and deadline day for the review and I really don't want to spend it doing 2k's troubleshooting testing for them.

EDIT: Scratch that theory. I just played a game on franchise 4. Turned off the console without returning to the main menu. Started up again and it loaded just fine.

I'm so sick of this sh#&.