MLB The Show 23 Launches Day One On Xbox Game Pass This March

I bet it just eats at Sony that MLB has them do this lol!

Awesome news.

Damn been a year already since the last ...not that I played then last

@Kaloudz Sony's San Diego is the development studio, but SIE isn't the publisher outside of PlayStation, MLB itself holds the publishing rights. Which is hilarious. So they do with the product as they see fit in their publishing jurisdiction and that means Game Pass.

Sony could flip them off and tell them they don't want to develop hit games to benefit Game Pass, but then Sony loses what's actually their #1 selling game.....Kratos plays second fiddle to baseball apparently.

It's a weird case where it's a first party game on PS, but SSD is actually acting as a third party with an outside publisher for other platforms, and Sony's own stubborn business model comes back to bite them as not putting this on their own subscription service to hoard all those launch sale dollars means they make XBox look better for their OWN top selling game.... It also humorously demonstrates their hypocrisy when one side of their mouth says "we're against day 1 subscription games because it cannibalizes important launch sales revenue" and out of the other side of their mouth says "hey we made more unit sales on our game on Xbox with day 1 game pass launch than we did on PlayStation, and we don't even get the publishing revenue for that!....." They have to openly admit that Game Pass is indeed profitable on big games.....because they have to report profits from it!

@Moonglow Why make up lies? MLB has always been consistently in the top 20 best selling games each year. Even now, Sony only reports sales numbers from PlayStation, not Xbox.

Was always interested in these games mainly for the career mode but I have no idea how the sport works.

@uptownsoul I don't recall the articles, might try Sammy for the sales figures for a few years. Remember the sales are YEARLY in not every 4+ years, and they also cited it had the highest spend of any sports title on PSN store, meaning more than FIFA..... And that alone is way more money than gow and tlou.

Either way sony either gets money from sales, gets money from Microsofts lump payment for GP and gets money from Microtransactions from all platforms. So sony aren't losing on this situation although I think they should ditch the license and get their Studio to make a different game, or make it a live service game and keep a small portion of the studio regularly updating it and the rest of the studio make a different game.

@NEStalgia people spend more on mlb on ps than fifa? @ me for the link as well

This has been my most played xbox game each of the last 2 years. I even hit 1,000 achievement score on '21. It's my go-to when I have 15 or 20 minutes and I can just do a few quick Road to the Show games.

Starting to wonder for how long this will last. Sooner or later Sony might try to push their weight around against MLB and insist that they agree to continue multi-plat, but that they won’t accept game pass day one.

@Cherip-the-Ripper it sounds shocking to me too at first, and would love a source, but it is not crazy. Soccer is not really that popular in the US, and the US can sometimes account for 40%~50% of the world money in gaming. Baseball, though, seems to be a bit more universal of a sport, although think the UK prefers Cricket so… 🤷‍♂️

@Tharsman @Cherip-the-Ripper I probably am thinking of a statement from the 2021 shareholder statements. This is an off hand source, a polygon article from the time (smh) but it referred to apparently a period of time following launch, not necessarily the full annum, but it's still pretty amazing

https://www.polygon.com/2021/5/27/22457307/mlb-the-show-21-sales-figures-xbox-playstation-npd

Sweet deal! I actually be giving it a shot this year since I have GP. Haven't played the show since 15 or 16.

@NEStalgia ahh well even just being #1 without xbox' sales is still mighty impressive in my books. Like Kaloudz I thought baseball in the gaming world was a pretty big niche.

@themightyant I think that Sony AGM statement about the MTX sales even in its launch window outstripping FIFA even out of it's launch window is pretty suggestive of how big it is though. I mean even outside launch window FIFA's never not one of the biggest things in revenue in all gaming, so if MLB outpaces it even in launch months, that's still massive.

I'd find it REALLY hard to believe if a licensed annual major sports franchise DIDN'T easily eclipse God of War with a total of 5 games + PSP spinoffs. No matter how much GoW sells there's only a few of them in existence going back to PS2, while MLB is every year. Those Wikipedia number seem dubious at best, but I'm having a hard time finding numbers overall for the series, and I wonder if they're releasing them at all, yet I know I saw some numbers at some point, probably on Push that were pretty big. And now that the series is multiplat including Switch....it seems impossible even at a glance that GoW or anything else is outstripping it.

Certainly GoW sells more consoles in in the PS5 era since MLB is "free" on Xbox and available on Switch and GoW is not But before that if you wanted a real licensed baseball game there was only once console that mattered.

Either way, you know the game is really important to Sony's bottom line if Sony of all companies would rather become an Xbox and Nintendo developer than lose it!

NHL doesn't outpace GoW, but worldwide ice hockey just doesn't touch baseball. Can't make a blockbuster in the land of maple syrup I guess, eh?

@Cherip-the-Ripper @Kaloudz LOL it used to be the BIGGEST, and by no small margin, sport in the US back in the early 20th century through the 50's or 60's at which point (American) football superseded it and then, more recently I suspect (but have no data) that basketball may have gone to the top (could still be football though.) But baseball, basketball, (American) football are the big three, and by big, I mean huuuuuuge. Ice hockey is a distant third, and soccer is a very very very distant forth. Actually I'm not sure where soccer, boxing, and pro wrestling slot among each other. And racing, which is almost certainly above soccer, maybe even above hockey but it might very by region where I'd expect hockey is bigger the closer to Canada one is, and racing bigger the farther south.

Baseball is also huge in Japan, I suspect the top sport still. They picked it up from us during the post-war reconstruction, and just went nuts with it.

Certainly lots of other places have picked it up too, but the US, and Japan are probably the biggest bases for it. Canada too. Latin America + Caribbean it's pretty big as well. But when talking video games, US + Japan + CA makes it a big deal!

In terms of the video game world it probably says something that back in the 8-bit era there were plenty of baseball games from Japanese companies (a few still around like RBI Baseball), due to it's popularity there, so it's been a staple diet in the gaming world since the beginning of gaming, and for licensed "real" baseball now, The Show is it!

@Kaloudz LOL, cricket..... and I'm sure, and instead of basketball there's polo.

But yeah, baseball is ingrained in American culture. A little league for kids in every town, a diamond at every public park (too many sports fields, not enough actual PARK, but I digress), an MLB team and stadium in every major city, and that's big big money, whole TV/radio networks just covering games 24/7, MLB is a multi-billion dollar business. Baseball...well...football and basketball are more what "football/soccer" is in the UK or Italy, baseball used to be, it may be a close second to that today. But yeah Superbowl (american football) and World Series (baseball) are THE big sports events, and are both (MUCH) bigger than World Cup for example here.

World Series is kind of a funny term because it's only North American teams, and isn't actually a worldwide event, I think Olympic baseball is the only worldwide baseball competition, and I don't think the US normally wins there, but that's partly because MLB players can't play so our best don't participate, it's mostly college and minor league players....but still...

In Canada ice hockey is the big one, baseball's probably #2 though, with (I think two? I don't follow sports much ) Canadian teams in the otherwise American MLB (Toronto Blue Jays, and....can't recall the other.). Latin America, soccer/"football" is obviously #1, but baseball's probably (distant) #2.

But yeah, it's absolutely huge. NFL and NBA are the one's I'd compare directly to the fervor in EU/UK over the football leagues, but basically while NFL and NBA may be more 1:1 directly comparable to the fervor over Premier League/FIFA over there, MLB is pretty much almost equally up there. Billions of dollars, multi-million dollar players, and drunken corporate VIP boxes abound. And public riots when teams win or lose.

@Kaloudz LOL, I played as a kid, I've been to MLB games.......I'm not cut out for it either. I spent half the games I attended wandering the stadium admiring the architecture and shopping kiosks rather than the bland game lol A bit like polo and croquet, eh guv?

But yeah, full-on major "football" level sport. 40,000 person max capacity stadiums, just like Premier over there, etc. "World series" tickets at prices mortals can't afford (but not quite as high as superbowl.) The game does a good job of replicating the real game. Including the boredom. But you can probably find world series clips on youtube to get the feel for how "world cup" level the big games are here

@NEStalgia damn dude I remember you being knowledgeable but damn dude.
Thanks for the history lesson, I for some reason thought american football has always been the biggest one, given that at least hollywood seems to like it more these days.
You'd be great on podcasts yano

@Cherip-the-Ripper Oh, either football or basketball definitely is the biggest one these days, but baseball was formerly it, and is still right behind those. A lot of cities build the stadiums for each right next to each other in a cluster.

Haha, podcasts....IDK that I have that "dramatic reading" flair that makes a podcast interesting versus a cure for insomnia

@Kaloudz They've actually been shrinking! The (American) football stadiums are huuuuuuuuge. The baseball stadiums from the mid-century were also similarly huge or many of them were "conversion" stadiums that they'd switch back and forth between football and baseball. They've been building new baseball stadiums that are smaller to make it more like how it was early last century, and more "closer" to the field. With less seating as population grows. And higher prices per ticket. Totally coincidentally, of course.... Not that the baseball stadiums aren't huge anyway, but those football stadiums are gargantuan!

To be fair to croquet, it's more "game" than "sport".

@Kaloudz People actually want the balls to come over the stands, that's part of the pros of the smaller design. It's more interactive and if you catch a ball you keep it (with some exceptions of helping the team by giving it back etc.) But...yeah, I've never been crazy about the prospect of getting creamed in the face with a ball. To be fair, MOST of the time if a ball goes in the stands it's a high ball that lost most of its momentum by the time it gets that far. MOST...of the time...

LOL, that description of croquet is spot on though, right down to Mr. Bean

@Kaloudz Oh, no baseballs are like rocks wrapped in leather....those suckers HURT! They hurt enough when thrown by normal people, but in MLB, pitchers are throwing pitches well over 100kph! Being pelted by 100kph rocks does some massive damage! Batters get helmets, everyone else doesn't. Without helmets each team would keep score by body count, lol. Baseball has a rule that if a pitcher hits a batter they get "walked" to base as though they hit the ball, but usually when a batter gets hit they're down on the ground for a while.... or months...

Ahh, nah, it's not the ball that gives permission to knock down women, children and elderly, that's just America! You should see how they drive and shop....

@Kaloudz I remember there being some sort of rag baseball, I forget what it's called that was more of like a "training" soft baseball or something for kids....forgot about that. There's also "softballs" which are giant sized baseballs that are, I guess relatively softer, though not really all that soft, and that's a different but nearly identical sport that's essentially "baseball for girls" (I'm sure there's some whole gendered sports rant someone can go on on that...) IMO "softballs" aren't meaningfully softer than baseballs.

Technically the ball SOUNDS soft. It's cork and rubber center, and many layers of wool yarn making up the ball with a leather casing. But it's packed so tightly that it's still a brick, especially at speed and still does major damage when hit by one. You'd think wool sounds soft, but it's like getting hit by a sheep fired out of a cannon

But yeah, when talking to Brits anything about "America vs over there" is pretty much tongue in cheek, because overall I get the sense it's pretty much the same. We learned everything we know about sucking from you guys, because technically we are you guys, even if we perfected the process a bit.