On 12/9/2019, Major League Baseball announced they are extending the licensing deal they with Sony. For fans of the show this news is great, as it ensures we will see more edition of MLB The Show for several more years. San Diego Studio, a first party studio within Playstation, has strived each year to make the game better than the prior year. In a market where the only real competitor, if you want to call it that, is RBI Baseball; one would think that San Diego Studio would become complacent. Overall, the edition for each does improve. Sometimes they make a change that fans do not like, but that happens to all sports titles.
What makes the announcement so much more important for the rest of video game playing MLB fans out there is that, for the first time ever, MLB the Show will be moving outside of the Playstation eco-system. Now it wasn’t officially announced that the game would be going to the Xbox and Switch, but both companies tweeted out replies to the news. To me this tells me that the game will be moving to those systems. The Xbox is a no brainer as Xbox One and the forthcoming Xbox Series X are extremely similar to the Playstation/Playstation Pro. It will be interesting to see what the video quality will be when it comes to the Switch. San Diego Studio did have the MLB the Show 15 up and running on the Playstation Vita. There was a decrease in the video quality when comparing the Vita and PS4. That being said it was a decent experience from a mobile perspective. I am also curious how the online multiplayer will work on the Switch. As those that have played Mario Kart on the Switch, you know that the lobby will drop if there are any issues with the Switch app.
The announcement stated that MLB the Show would not be going Multi-platform until 2021 at the earliest. I can completely see this as MLB the Show 20 is set to release in March, just in time for spring training. Unfortunately everyone will have to wait until 2021 to see it on the other platforms as well as for us players to see if the multiplayer will be multi-platform as well. Either way, it will be time for all to play ball in 2021.
