In a rather surprising but welcome move by Sony, the company has announced that one of their long time exclusive franchises, MLB The Show, will no longer be just that, an exclusive. Sony, along with Major League Baseball, and Sony San Diego Studio, announced via press release a multi-year, multi-platform extension of the MLB license. Apparently a major part of the this new deal is that the series be made readily available for other systems, and it looks like Sony has agreed. This means that MLB The Show will eventually be launching for Xbox and Nintendo systems.
Although it wasn’t clearly stated that Microsoft and Nintendo would be getting their hands on the franchise, it does state in the press release that MLB The Show will be coming to “additional console platforms as early as 2021.” Seeing as there aren’t really any other major players in the video game console market at this time, it’s fairly safe to assume that fans and owners of the Xbox and Nintendo consoles can expect to see the series make an appearance at some point. It also helps that both the official Twitters pages of Xbox and Nintendo retweeted the press release, which more or less hints that something is already being worked out. A PC release could be likely as well.
The bigger question now is, which Xbox system will it come out for? We already know that Project Scarlett is on the way, as well as the planned cheaper disc-less system. The company revealed that the system will be available during the 2020 holidays, same as the PlayStation 5 which has also been confirmed for 2020 holiday release. Since the game has an annual release we see future titles for both companies, including the PS4 and Xbox One, as support will likely continue for those consoles as well.
Nintendo will most likely keep the Switch going long after 2021 and it will presumably launch for that as well. This is definitely an exciting moment as MLB The Show has been long considered the premier baseball simulator series. Ever since the MLB 2K series was canceled in 2014, Sony has held the reigns on the dominating baseball series. Now it’s no longer an exclusive, it’s a multi-platform franchise.