Image: Sony Interactive Entertainment

MLB The Show 25 Should Have Something to Prove

A series that has been meandering in recent years needs to solidify its place in the pecking order once again.

MLB The Show and NBA 2K have been the stalwarts of yearly sports games over the past decade. We can argue about other games being solid over a 10-year stretch — for example, Super Mega Baseball is not a yearly release, but it is the most consistent to me — but I think it’s fair to say those two games are most often mentioned when it comes to the “best” sports game year to year.

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Those two franchises have had the most consistent gameplay and have at times been the two series pushing the envelope the most when it comes to graphics and features. This is why it’s surprising that those two franchises now might have the most to prove coming into this next cycle. We’ll be waiting months for NBA 2K26 news, but MLB The Show 25 is hot out of the gates trying to prove it’s still an elite sports franchise.

Whether you care about Diamond Dynasty or not, it was telling that SDS (the developers of The Show) were out there in November saying changes were coming to that mode for ‘25. They knew fans were upset, and while DD had once been the paragon of fairness for card-collecting modes, things had gotten both stale and annoying, even ignoring the microtransactions part of the equation. Candor is rarely seen from these companies, but when it does occur, it is in these postmortem environments where they can look back and at least admit they screwed up here and there.

And, to be blunt, SDS has been screwing up. It hasn’t been “epic” levels of screwing up, it’s just not what we have come to expect from SDS. As good as the gameplay remains — and as always that is what’s most important — a lot of cracks have been showing in the foundation. It’s not a graphical showpiece. It’s not a top-tier “modes” game as both RttS and franchise are not what you point to as the cream of the crop among its peers. DD was once showcased as the “right” way to do card-collecting modes, and even that has begun to falter. The new features they added like stadium creator had great starts and then have sort of been ignored. Even the “novel” concepts like Y2Y saves, rosters carrying over, and stadium sounds have all been banished for one reason or another (some of those reasons being out of their control). In a sense, even as gameplay has stayed steady and presentation has improved, The Show has lost a little bit of its identity.

Image: Sony Interactive Entertainment

The one obvious saving grace has been the Storylines mode, and it’s great, but it’s a time capsule. It’s something you appreciate and share with others, but most of us play it once and then move on. In a way, Storylines might be an example I use to explain how massive sports games are — probably to their detriment. Having to update a mode like that year to year is a big undertaking, and yet it’s just one of many things SDS has to try and improve every 12 months. (It’s why I think making sports games has to be pretty damn brutal, but that’s neither here nor there.)

This brings me back to MLB The Show 25, and the news that hit last week. We got our cover athletes. We got news about high school and college elements being included. We know a gameplay trailer is hitting on February 4 (tomorrow!). We know the Switch is the only last-gen console being supported (more on that in a second). And we know that the game is releasing earlier than it has in many years as it has a March 18 release — let the record show I still miss the days of that late February/early March release.

This is all seemingly good news, but there’s still mixed messages in here so far. SDS always posts an FAQ along with the announcement of the new game, and it has the usual unsurprising stuff that’s a bummer like no year-to-year saves being included. However, the more potentially concerning note is that not just cross-progression but cross-play is still going to be available between the Switch and PS5/Xbox Series X|S. If there is one thing the OS community has been banging the drum about, beyond Y2Y saves and roster carryover, it’s about the lack of graphical punch in The Show.

Let’s go back to MLB The Show 14 as a reminder about how SDS pitched that game making its way to the PS4.

(It’s worth noting that even ‘14 felt a little underwhelming in the graphics department when making the leap from PS3 to PS4, but it still felt way better than the leap from PS4 to PS5.)

And it’s not just graphics, there are running theories about animations, features, or other things that might be getting slowed up by supporting older consoles. Memory matters for these games, and general “power” helps everywhere not just with graphics. We obviously don’t have all the metrics, but I’ve always been a believer that sports gamers are a good chunk of the early adopters of new consoles. There is a reason sports games get top billing for a lot of these console launches, and it’s because we’re suckers (I say it with love, I’m a sucker too!) who already buy yearly sports games — so yeah we’ll buy that console Day One as well. We’re probably also the ones who end up spending far too much on microtransactions and other things, so I do think the developers should cater to “us” even if their games sell well beyond the hardcore crowd.

We are on the forefront of a lot of these launches because we want the new hotness, and we want to see how good our sports games look on the latest and greatest. Even if we accept that we have reached a bit of a plateau with “graphics” advancements from generation to generation (we might never have another leap like the one from standard-def to high-def), it still feels self-evident that we could be getting much more out of sports games on the newest consoles. This is why many of us are wary about the cross-play mention.

I’m sure SDS has some deal in place with MLB that demands they provide a way for folks to play The Show on all the major console platforms, but I would be surprised if it means cross-play is also part of the agreement. This feels like a choice, and even if the Switch 2 is on the horizon, that’s not the console in the FAQ. It’s the wonderful but outdated original Switch that’s mentioned.

I’m not going to sit here and say I know a damn thing about how cross-play works, but as a “normie” gamer, it feels like that means restrictions are still going to be in place to make that work, which is exactly what a lot of us did not want. And, on top of that, a lot of the most negative parts of some folks’ brains were activated by the supposed screenshots that are from MLB The Show 25 that are now on the PS Store. To me, those screenshots look a lot like MLB The Show 24, which is not ideal if you’re trying to make the case for hefty graphical improvements.

Let’s wind the clocks back a year. I specifically wrote about The Show’s last-gen support situation last February and how it felt frustrating to see these old consoles still being so heavily supported. It was 11 years of PS4 support at that point, which was way longer than any previous generation. In other words, this is not some newfound concern. How much development time gets pulled from the current-gen consoles to make cross-play work? How many developers are on the Switch version at all?

That said, we know features like Stadium Creator already don’t make it to the Switch, but does that also mean animations, audio, presentation, certain graphical enhancements are flexible enough to just not be in the Switch version while still having cross-play work online? I think we’re going to have to hope that’s the case because either way expectations are on the rise with The Show 25.

Again, the gameplay has remained solid, so maybe the concerns will be overblown if everything else is flexible and can just be turned “down” for the Switch, but it’s a real prove-it situation now. Cross-play now feels like an obvious scapegoat if the gameplay trailer underwhelms tomorrow.

There are some other interesting changes beyond the game itself that are also worth noting. There is no collector’s edition/steelbook this year. In retrospect, this feels sort of obvious considering the steelbook last year didn’t even come with a disc. Plus, digital does represent a vast majority of new game sales industry-wide at this point, so it’s just the nature of the times. Either way, plenty of OSers still always bought the hat/steelbook edition and now it’s gone for at least this year.

The more seismic shift is that ‘25 will not be on Game Pass. This is going to be the first time The Show has not been on Game Pass since the franchise came to Xbox. I assume whatever deal that was struck between the companies when the licensing agreement with MLB was extended has run out, but it likely means SDS has money they need to replace now. Whatever money Microsoft perhaps threw their way to get the game on Game Pass won’t be there, and so they have to win over Xbox owners enough to entice them to take the plunge and buy a $70 game.

All this is a long way of me saying that February 4 is a big day for The Show. Ultimately, a lot of us would be happy with ‘25 if we heard about how bullpen logic was “finally” fixed, and there will be better trade logic/contracts/off-season signing logic within franchise mode. But there’s another sizable group that is just going to be pulling up on February 4 to look at them polygons, look at them grass and dirt textures, and look at them animations. Those are a chunk of the people who have been pleading for last-gen consoles to get the boot, and if they’re still underwhelmed on the 4th, they’re going to look right at the Nintendo Switch and then ask SDS why they made the choice they made.

Author
Image of Chase Becotte
Chase Becotte
Chase has written at Operation Sports for over 10 years, and he's been playing sports games way longer than that. He loves just about any good sports game but gravitates to ones that coincide with the ongoing real seasons of the NBA, NHL, MLB, NFL, and so on. As of now, he's gearing up for EA Sports College Football 25 and what should be a wild summer while still dabbling in the latest Top Spin and MLB The Show.