Our friends at Out of the Park Developments have officially announced that Out of the Park Baseball 21 will be released on March 20, 2020. OOTP 21 is the 21st anniversary edition of the award-winning baseball strategy game, showcasing the most new features and improvements ever made to a single new release in series history. It is available for pre-order today, which comes with a 10% discount and 3 days of early access to the public beta starting March 17.
While some people think of Out of the Park Developments in the same vein as the major studios and publishers of the sports gaming landscape, it’s amazing to realize that they are a tiny independent studio based in Germany with less than 10 people full time. Yet, they consistently release the most incredibly in-depth and well-received baseball strategy game in the industry – and it’s fully licensed by the MLB and MLBPA to boot.
Their story is nothing short of the biggest underdog tale in the gaming business.
They announced the game live today on their Twitch channel, which also included a roadmap of their Developer Livestream events. There will be at least three of these livestreams, on Monday February 24, Monday March 2, and Monday March 9 all at 9 PM ET.
Out of the Park Baseball 21 includes a ton of great stuff, including:
- All new Game Flow that guides you through the unique OOTP experience in a smart, fully customizable way. Not sure what to do next? Game Flow gets you where you want to be, depending on what is happening right now. Whether it is Spring Training, the dog days of summer, or the off-season, it is easy to find what to do next. A fun way for newcomers and veterans alike to experience Out of the Park Baseball.
- 3D Ballpark Construction Kit – At long last, build your franchise’s dream ballpark! The new 3D Ballpark Construction Kit allows you to configure a 3D stadium to your whims. Choose from many different field shapes and sizes, ballpark layouts and architectural elements and combine them with Ballpark Factors to emphasize the kind of organization you want to put together – defense, power, speed, gaps, you name it. This long-awaited feature, which will be improved via free updates throughout the year, lets you live a childhood dream – building your own ballpark.
- Upgraded Live Services! The smashing success of Live Starts expands this season, with additional information being used to make each Live Start even more authentic. Start your OOTP 21 experience from any date of the 2020 MLB season – from Day 1 through the end of the 2020 Postseason – with up-to-the-minute Rosters, Injuries, Trades, Standings, and more!
- New 2020 MLB rules, tactics, and player strategies! Baseball is changing in significant ways, and they have everything in place. How will you use the all-new 26-man rosters to your advantage, as well as the new 28-man September configuration? How will you strategize around the new 3-batter-minimum for relief pitchers? What will your lineups and rotations look like with separate 10- and 15-day Injured Lists for pitchers and hitters? It is a whole new world!
- Community-driven User Experience improvements! A beautiful new interface with fully customizable player page statistics. Plus! Player lists are dramatically improved and can be configured to your liking, with more information than ever available at your fingertips.
- Big 3D in-game upgrades! New in-game camera modes let you ‘follow the ball’ during the action, multiple camera angles are available for pre-pitch, during the pitch, and after the pitch. Dozens of new 3D animations are in place, and the entire 3D gameplay has been smoothed and polished. Plus, they have completely reworked in-game audio for better crowd and ambient noise during games – including ballpark-specific audio customization!
- Scouting Reimagined! OOTP has rebuilt scouting from the ground up this year, with significantly improved AI, new visual indicators of scouting accuracy, a new and fully customizable Player Scouting Page, new Needs-based assignments, organically created scouting reports coming at different intervals, and more.
- Drafting Reimagined! A huge amount of new information is in your hands for the draft, including Mock Drafts, Future Draft Classes, sortable Draft History, and more. Realistic high school, college, and junior college player progressions make draft classes more interesting – and authentic – than ever. You will be positioned to dominate!
- New statistics! Strikeout percentages, walk percentages, strikeout minus walk percentages and more are tracked and displayed to ensure you are fully aware of how successful (or not) your players are.
- New league customization options! Build your baseball universe YOUR way with improved League Expansionthat has been made even more configurable, including long-desired improvement of Minor League team arrangements.
- The All-Star Weekend goes BIG! For the first time ever, experience and play the Prospects Game and admire majestic blasts in the Home Run Challenge.
- Upgraded technical design under the hood! Reduced save game space requirements use less of your hard drive and optimize the game’s installation and simulation speed.
- The most active development team in the business roars back this season! Each week OOTP produces dozens of videos and podcasts, including the popular weekly video shows This Week In Perfect Team and Perfect Team Playoff Push every Thursday, multiple Franchise series, and two audio podcasts – OOTP Now and The Kevin Kennedy Show! No development studio big or small matches what these guys do. You are in direct touch with the developers and the community every day.
- Many more improvements, all built upon the incredibly deep award-winning Out of the Park Baseball engine that has accurately simulated the World Series winner the past two seasons on MLB Network and produced deep simulations for FiveThirtyEight.com.
Out of the Park Baseball 21 also includes Perfect Team 21 mode, the super-popular free online competition mode in Out of the Park Baseball that shook up the industry when it first launched in OOTP 19. Assemble, customize, and manage your team by collecting baseball cards from the past, present and future of Major League Baseball. Set your strategy and tactics, then compete against players from around the world to see who is truly the best! New Perfect Team 21 mode features include:
- New player card selection – collect over 4000 cards!
- Beautiful new player card artwork
- A brand new league structure with 2 new league levels and a single Perfect League.Â
- New promotion/relegation systems for a more dynamic league evolution
- Improved ratings calculations for every type of player card
- Hundreds of new Collection Missions with great rewards
- New in-season Special Tournaments – including qualifiers – and competitions with unique rewards, enhancing the wildly popular Perfect Team Tournament feature
- New content delivered each and every week all Perfect Team season long
- Of course dozens of surprises big and small all year!
Here’s the OOTP 21 developer Twitch livestream schedule.
Customers can pre-order OOTP 21 for $35.99, a 10% discount off its full retail price in the OOTP Developments webstore. All pre-order purchases include beta access on March 17, three days ahead of the official launch on March 20.
OOTP 21 can be pre-ordered here.
Steam pre-orders are not available. Instead, the game launches on these channels on March 20 for a 10% launch discount which expires March 27.
All customers who pre-order or purchase the game and register a Perfect Team mode account prior to March 27 will receive one bonus Perfect Team mode Gold Pack.
OOTP 21 runs on PC/Mac/Linux and features the American League and National League logos, the World Series trophy, official logos and jerseys for all 30 MLB teams, over 150 Minor League Baseball league and team logos, and historical MLB logos.
