As regular readers here know, I have an affinity for sports games. It dates way back to my old NES days with Super Tecmo Basketball and RBI Baseball and through the years persisted with the NBA 2K and Live games and oodles of Madden. Some sports I tend to play more frequently than others, with Major League Baseball being one of those I take a stab at every couple of years or so. I believe MLB 12 The Show was the last in the series I have played.
Sports titles are ones that hook me for a handful of reasons. The very fact that sports themselves have a tendency be very cyclical, with every year bringing teams a renewed sense of hope that the tweaks they made to their rosters might be what leads them to a championship runs parallel to how sports video games tend to work as well. Year to year you seldom see wholesale changes, but improvements in the presentation with some new gameplay wrinkles and updated rosters are enough for most (but not all) sports fans.
VGChartz's Adam Cartwright: "This is the sixth entry in a series of articles I’m writing that will look at all of the games available in a particular genre on the Vita. The articles will highlight all Vita-native games, as well as any backwards-compatible PSP and PS1 titles that can be downloaded in English (i.e. from the EU or NA stores), and will include some commentary on how well those games run on Vita and whether they fill any missing gaps in the library."
MLB 15 The Show Out Today on PS4, PS3, PS Vita
*Global server operation for MLB 14 The Show will be extended beyond June 18th.*
For MLB 14 owners, playing online will soon prove impossible just a year after release.
Wow, so games only have a one year lifecycle now?
That's terrible any way you slice it.
if nobody plays then they can make a case but just to push people to buy the new one is not cool. good thing you can still play offline
Asking for a game boycott right there. Better lower your sales expectations for MLB 15 now Sony...
It might be servers just in europe though look at the source.
I cant imagine an american baseball game doing well over.
Bigger news is that socom is officially dead and you can no longer go onle for ANY resistance games.
If it's just in Europe then I should let you know, they don't actually sell this game at retail over here. It's terribly unpopular in the UK.
Hardcoregamer missreporting things, again!
It would be worth reaching out an asking them to clarify if this is just UK, or Europe, or worldwide, but for the moment it's only on the UK Playstation site, so it seems unlikely they are shutting the servers down for the USA. If they were, it probably wouldn't be the UK site providing that information.
'so games only have a one year lifecycle now? '
Sports games have always had a one year lifecycle.
I have friends who still play Madden 2012 online.
Not everybody can afford to buy roster update every year.
Doesn't matter, you don't take down the severs a year after the game launches. You're basically saying that if you want to play online you're just going to have buy our game every year. Kind of messed up.
People are disagreeing but the NBA2k games die like a month after the next one releases, and I think its the same for Fifa
People think this is bad because they're not used to the online structure of sports games. Most people that play them buy them every year, it doesn't make sense financially to keep servers up for the minority that haven't moved on (plus they wouldn't even be able to support the old game any more)
What Snipes said. I don't doubt that some people keep playing the older games, but I would bet that most sports game fans do move to the newest one every year.
Well let's be honest here. The servers for MLB the show are pure trash. The game is basically umplayable online because of the lag and delay.
Don't say it is my internet because I have150down 50upload and my friend has the same thing and we live like 15 minutes away still unplayable.
They need to invest in new servers because I never had this problem with 2k baseball it was usually playable, 2k basketball is another story however
That doesn't make much sense because when you play 1 on 1 games it's always peer to peer, not routed through Sony's servers. Maybe the netcode is bad on the newer version, but it would not be the servers, causing your issue.
I haven't played the PS4 game, but when I played MLB 13 on PS3 it was always free of any visible lag. Perhaps it's a circumscribed netcode issue causing your difficulty.
this is what happens when devs turn game into a service. they expect you throw away hundreds of dollars only to later say they are making the game obsolete and to do the same thing for their new version.
I have been so disappointed with Sony's last 2 MLB The Show titles I have gone back to playing MLB 2K13 which servers are STILL running. I played an online match last night. It even still has a pretty good community.
Sony FORCING their customers to have to upgrade to the next iteration if they want to play online (Which has always been crap due to either Sony's servers or a consistent issue with every MLB The Show title).
I have sworn off MLB The Show until they make a PS4 version from the ground up (Not ported from the PS3) and actually make better servers.
That really sucks for people still playing 14. I guess with The Show 15 releasing soon Sony wants to promote that more instead to it's users.
That's really concerning when you look at things like PSNow and other pushes in the digital space.
And the cover of The Show 15 has Yasiel Puig from the LA Dodgers!? Instant fail!
The majority of the MLB The Show fanbase upgrade every year. For those gamers that dont really play online and are more into just casually playing the single player modes like Road to the Show, Franchise and Season Mode....they are not affected by this.
Also, thanks to the introduction of Share Play, older MLB The Show games dont even need an online anymore. You can just Share Play and virtually coach co-op against any of your friends whenever you want.
If we're talking about games like Uncharted, Killzone or The Last of Us, I agree the servers need to stay on long term. But for a yearly sports franchise, you dont need 5 year servers. Lets be realistic. Its 2015. How many MLB The Show fans are still playing MLB09 The Show?
@Lifeinnz Im not defending anything. I understand the principle as to why this would upset some people. But yearly sports games arent like other games that only come out once every few years and need a longterm online.
For me personally, Im a big baseball fan and my friends and I all update MLB The Show every year, so this really isnt an issue for me. If some other MLB The Show fans dont agree, thats fine. I accept that my opinion is in the minority on this specific issue.
Games like MLB deserve long online service. A game like Mlb deserves at least a five year commitment, the biggest reason is that this game comes out every year and not all gamers play/buy it every year. If this is what they plan on doing going forward they might not see my business. @Chris a lot of us don't agree with your logic sorry.
One baseball games dont sell anymore case in point mlb 2k 2. Not a whole lot of ppl are playing mlb the show rite now.
But 1yr later Damn Sony is the struggle that real? But it does suck 4those who still play it
