MLB 10: The Show

[Weebs]

Other than revealing that Joe Mauer is the new cover athlete, there's also a big article on ESPN detailing new features of the game.

I haven't read the entire thing, but I went through the section about the updates to Road to the Show, and it has fixed basically every single thing I thought needed to be fixed, including:

- You can now watch every single pitch/play/etc. throughout a game, as opposed to just when your player was up.
- That extends to fielding, where you can either watch every pitch (even on plays you're not involved in), or just the last pitch of the AB.  If you're a pitcher and get pulled from a game, you can watch the rest of it to see what happens.
- You now start in AA and have to earn an invite to spring training.
- There are specific training drills for fielding and pitching (both your base stats and pitch-specific stats).
- Your statistics against each player are now tracked throughout your entire career (awesome).
- They added the Home Run Derby and Futures Game.

There's also a whole new mode for catchers, new presentation, visiting team fans filling up stadiums (like when the Cubs play at Miller Park), and a more extensive online system.  The game sounds fucking awesome and I'm not even going to bother wasting my money on the 2K game this year.

[Weebs]

Some new videos for this year's game have been released here and here.

This game is going to be fucking awesome.

[Powdered Toast Man]

Some new videos for this year's game have been released here and here.

This game is going to be fucking awesome.

FUCKING RAGE

[Yeti]

Other than revealing that Joe Mauer is the new cover athlete, there's also a big article on ESPN detailing new features of the game.

I haven't read the entire thing, but I went through the section about the updates to Road to the Show, and it has fixed basically every single thing I thought needed to be fixed, including:

- You can now watch every single pitch/play/etc. throughout a game, as opposed to just when your player was up.
- That extends to fielding, where you can either watch every pitch (even on plays you're not involved in), or just the last pitch of the AB.  If you're a pitcher and get pulled from a game, you can watch the rest of it to see what happens.
- You now start in AA and have to earn an invite to spring training.
- There are specific training drills for fielding and pitching (both your base stats and pitch-specific stats).
- Your statistics against each player are now tracked throughout your entire career (awesome).
- They added the Home Run Derby and Futures Game.

There's also a whole new mode for catchers, new presentation, visiting team fans filling up stadiums (like when the Cubs play at Miller Park), and a more extensive online system.  The game sounds fucking awesome and I'm not even going to bother wasting my money on the 2K game this year.

As will I. Hopefully, I don't get fucked over in my quest to be an All-Star

[Richard Chuggar]

Some new videos for this year's game have been released here and here.

This game is going to be fucking awesome.

FUCKING RAGE

It's going to be really fucking sweet ass until you play it 23 hours fucking straight on the first fucking day you buy it and you bitch and fucking complain about how the fucking graphics could be better and the fucking centerfielder keeps running into the fucking wall when you're clearly fucking pressing the fucking AB* button and every single fucking time you get a 3-1 count on the fucking hitter he hits another fucking home run b/c you can't fucking locate the pitch exactly where you want it to be.
Other than that, it does sound like a fucking awesome ass game.

[Saul Goodman]

Some new videos for this year's game have been released here and here.

This game is going to be fucking awesome.

Can't wait to see how well they recreated the H.H.H. Metrodome!

[Weebs]

Visual Concepts should just save themselves some money and stop making a baseball game.

[Pre]

Visual Concepts should just save themselves some money and stop making a baseball game.

For someone who loves video games and has a degree in them, you show a shocking lack of
understanding of the whole business of the industry.  The Show is a ps3 only game, the 360
has a much higher user base.  If VC manages to make a decent game, they'll sell plenty of
copies.  Hell, they've sold a lot of copies in the past despite making shitty games.  EA didn't
stop making Madden when the 2K football games on the Dreamcast was better.  They didn't
stop making NBA Live when NBA 2k8 was better.  Smart companies just try and make a better
game and in this situation also rake in the money their exclusivity on the platform gives them.

Or, they could see one screen shot and give up and move back into their parent's basement.

[Kermit IV]

Visual Concepts should just save themselves some money and stop making a baseball game.

Interesting.  I thought 2K9 did two things better than The Show.  (1)  I loved the pitching/hitting interfaces, even though the physics behind them were completely broken.  (2)  I loved the real-time presentation.

Now, it's down to one sad, broken thing.

[Powdered Toast Man]

Visual Concepts should just save themselves some money and stop making a baseball game.

Interesting.  I thought 2K9 did two things better than The Show.  (1)  I loved the pitching/hitting interfaces, even though the physics behind them were completely broken.  (2)  I loved the real-time presentation.

Now, it's down to one sad, broken thing.

Why did you love those things if they were broken?  I'm not stick poking, I'm serious.  Super serial.  I mean, the idea is great.  But, they've skullfucked that idea for a couple years now.

[Weebs]

Visual Concepts should just save themselves some money and stop making a baseball game.

For someone who loves video games and has a degree in them, you show a shocking lack of
understanding of the whole business of the industry.  The Show is a ps3 only game, the 360
has a much higher user base.  If VC manages to make a decent game, they'll sell plenty of
copies.  Hell, they've sold a lot of copies in the past despite making shitty games.  EA didn't
stop making Madden when the 2K football games on the Dreamcast was better.  They didn't
stop making NBA Live when NBA 2k8 was better.  Smart companies just try and make a better
game and in this situation also rake in the money their exclusivity on the platform gives them.

Or, they could see one screen shot and give up and move back into their parent's basement.

Take-Two has even stated that they're seriously looking into the future of the MLB franchise because it's not making them enough money.  They've already canned their College Basketball franchise (along with EA, who was their only competition), and I believe they might stop making the NHL franchise.  Now, I realize both of those games were multi-platform for each company, but Take-Two pretty much has the GTA franchise keeping it afloat.  That's why EA was about to purchase them a while back, and why that still might happen.  I couldn't find the exact sales numbers for all versions, but last April, The Show beat out the 360 version of 2K9 by over 100k units.  It was somewhere around a 40% increase in sales from 2008-09 for The Show, while the 2K sales continued to drop.  There comes a point where, I would imagine, Take-Two will stop investing the money to produce a game for 6 different platforms that fails to sell nearly as well as a game available on two.  Not to mention, they would have to keep paying the MLB (I think the contract is up after this year) for exclusive third-party rights for games.

Also, saying they should stop making the game was more just about how awesome The Show is going to be, not an actual suggestion for the company's long-term financial success.

[Weebs]

Visual Concepts should just save themselves some money and stop making a baseball game.

Interesting.  I thought 2K9 did two things better than The Show.  (1)  I loved the pitching/hitting interfaces, even though the physics behind them were completely broken.  (2)  I loved the real-time presentation.

Now, it's down to one sad, broken thing.

Why did you love those things if they were broken?  I'm not stick poking, I'm serious.  Super serial.  I mean, the idea is great.  But, they've skullfucked that idea for a couple years now.

DPD

I think 2K's hitting interface is (or at least has the potential to be) much better than The Show's.  The swing stick just feels more natural than pressing a button, especially when one of those buttons is the "Power Swing," which has been used in baseball games for years and years.  Unfortunately, they haven't found a good way to actually produce realistic results with the swing stick, and somehow anytime you actually get a good swing, the ball flies 400 ft. out of the park.

The pitching, on the other hand, I don't have as much of a problem with.  They keep it difficult enough by not letting you always hit your spot, even if you're dead-on with the pitching meter.  2K's system always felt really gimmicky, and the gesture controls were basically just a convoluted meter, although this year's might be a little better.

[Powdered Toast Man]

Visual Concepts should just save themselves some money and stop making a baseball game.

Interesting.  I thought 2K9 did two things better than The Show.  (1)  I loved the pitching/hitting interfaces, even though the physics behind them were completely broken.  (2)  I loved the real-time presentation.

Now, it's down to one sad, broken thing.

Why did you love those things if they were broken?  I'm not stick poking, I'm serious.  Super serial.  I mean, the idea is great.  But, they've skullfucked that idea for a couple years now.

DPD

I think 2K's hitting interface is (or at least has the potential to be) much better than The Show's.  The swing stick just feels more natural than pressing a button, especially when one of those buttons is the "Power Swing," which has been used in baseball games for years and years.  Unfortunately, they haven't found a good way to actually produce realistic results with the swing stick, and somehow anytime you actually get a good swing, the ball flies 400 ft. out of the park.

The pitching, on the other hand, I don't have as much of a problem with.  They keep it difficult enough by not letting you always hit your spot, even if you're dead-on with the pitching meter.  2K's system always felt really gimmicky, and the gesture controls were basically just a convoluted meter, although this year's might be a little better.

This is the same shit we've said last year and the year before.  I'd press a goddamned button to swing over some broken shit stick if I knew that I got a great baseball game.

[Weebs]

Visual Concepts should just save themselves some money and stop making a baseball game.

Interesting.  I thought 2K9 did two things better than The Show.  (1)  I loved the pitching/hitting interfaces, even though the physics behind them were completely broken.  (2)  I loved the real-time presentation.

Now, it's down to one sad, broken thing.

Why did you love those things if they were broken?  I'm not stick poking, I'm serious.  Super serial.  I mean, the idea is great.  But, they've skullfucked that idea for a couple years now.

DPD

I think 2K's hitting interface is (or at least has the potential to be) much better than The Show's.  The swing stick just feels more natural than pressing a button, especially when one of those buttons is the "Power Swing," which has been used in baseball games for years and years.  Unfortunately, they haven't found a good way to actually produce realistic results with the swing stick, and somehow anytime you actually get a good swing, the ball flies 400 ft. out of the park.

The pitching, on the other hand, I don't have as much of a problem with.  They keep it difficult enough by not letting you always hit your spot, even if you're dead-on with the pitching meter.  2K's system always felt really gimmicky, and the gesture controls were basically just a convoluted meter, although this year's might be a little better.

This is the same shit we've said last year and the year before.  I'd press a goddamned button to swing over some broken shit stick if I knew that I got a great baseball game.

Then Sony should just steal it.  A game can be absolutely terrible if it introduces some new, interesting mechanic that other games can better utilize.  Unfortunately, the 2K series has managed to take one interesting idea, implement it poorly, and then spent the next 3 years telling everyone how much better it has gotten.  The series had so much promise back when the head of the MVP franchise started working on it.  He should have just made MVP.

[Kermit IV]

Visual Concepts should just save themselves some money and stop making a baseball game.

Interesting.  I thought 2K9 did two things better than The Show.  (1)  I loved the pitching/hitting interfaces, even though the physics behind them were completely broken.  (2)  I loved the real-time presentation.

Now, it's down to one sad, broken thing.

Why did you love those things if they were broken?  I'm not stick poking, I'm serious.  Super serial.  I mean, the idea is great.  But, they've skullfucked that idea for a couple years now.

DPD

I think 2K's hitting interface is (or at least has the potential to be) much better than The Show's.  The swing stick just feels more natural than pressing a button, especially when one of those buttons is the "Power Swing," which has been used in baseball games for years and years.  Unfortunately, they haven't found a good way to actually produce realistic results with the swing stick, and somehow anytime you actually get a good swing, the ball flies 400 ft. out of the park.

The pitching, on the other hand, I don't have as much of a problem with.  They keep it difficult enough by not letting you always hit your spot, even if you're dead-on with the pitching meter.  2K's system always felt really gimmicky, and the gesture controls were basically just a convoluted meter, although this year's might be a little better.

THIS.  Of course, I've already tried explaining this to IAN.  Multiple times.  A mechanic can be clever and innovative even if the physics are busted.  I guess it's not even really innovative, though, since MVP NCAA 2006 already did it, with GREAT, non-broken physics.

I really hope 2K makes a great game this year for the sake of competition.  But I have little faith that it's going to be anything but another busted effort on 2K's part.