MLB Senior Vice President Jamie Leece confirmed the surprising news on April 2.
What Is MLB The Show 21?
Microsoft’s most recent Xbox Game Pass acquisition completely comes out of the left field. Although we already knew that MLB The Show 21 was set to release on the Xbox consoles as well, making it available on the Xbox Game Pass, and at launch, is yet another home run for Microsoft. Since 2006, the San Diego Studio, a first-party studio for Sony, has taken the lead over the development of Major League Baseball games. As a result, most Major League Baseball games have been exclusive to PlayStation consoles for the better part of the past three decades. It wasn’t until MLB The Show 2020 that the games appeared on non-Sony platforms as a result of a new deal San Diego Studio signed with the MLB in late 2019. For those not in the know, MLB The Show 21 is the latest installment in a series of video Major League Baseball video games. The series is developed by San Diego Studio and produced by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The games typically simulate a standard baseball game with players able to control either an individual player or an entire team. In MLB The Show 21, players will benefit from the enhancements, improvements, and optimizations made by the developers for the game to be a true next-gen title. It will also come with a number of new game modes and an updated Franchise mode. In particular, a new mode will let players skip through certain moments of a season. This way, they can play only select postseason games en route to securing a championship. MLB The Show 21 is set to release on April 20 for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X. Microsoft is also reportedly letting Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers play MBL The Show 21 via their Android devices through the Xbox Cloud Gaming feature.
The Xbox Game Pass Library Keeps on Getting Bigger
Making MLB The Show 21 available on Xbox Game Pass at Launch only serves to highlight the advantage that the Xbox Game Pass currently offers right now. Instead of buying the game outright for full price, Xbox Game Pass subscribers can get a chance to play the upcoming title at launch as part of their subscription. The best part about this is that it’s not the only brand new game that’s part of the Xbox Game Pass’ growing library. In addition to MLB The Show 21, Microsoft also secured Outriders as a launch title for the Xbox Game Pass With two big titles in the fold, it’s safe to say that Microsoft is betting big on Xbox Game Pass becoming the ultimate gaming subscription service. Whether or not that will happen in the future is something that we don’t know as of yet. But, what we are sure of is that Microsoft is winning the subscription game right now.
