See I was the same way last gen, EA's game was so far behind I would rather take the better gameplay with the reoccuring bugs over the arcade fest that EA's game used to be. Once that changed it was fairly easy to vote with my wallet and not reward 2k for failing to address reoccuring issues. 2k8's trade finder was nice, its too bad it was unusable due to it always causing freezes. Same thing with injuries since the AI teams were too stupid to fill roster holes correctly year in year out. It'd be one thing if 2k would patch post release issues like that, but they aparently can't be bothered to spend resources to do so, or market their games properly aside from NBA in the first place.
If they manged to fix all the outstanding issues with 2k10 along with major AI improvements I'll most definately pick it up, unlike NHL10 though it sure won't be an automatic day one purchase until I know for certain.