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Hoping to tap the lucrative Venn diagram overlap that includes both basketball and baseball fans is PlayStation Sports Pack Volume 1, a compilation that offers PlayStation 3 owners NBA 2K14 and MLB 14: The Show.

This two-game package debuts on April 1, six months after NBA 2K14 first hit store shelves, but the same day that MLB 14: The Show goes on sale. The compilation is priced at $90, and offers players both games in their entirety alongside "6000 STUBS for MLB 14 The Show and 20,000 Virtual Currency for NBA 2K14." If you haven't played either of these games, think of STUBS and Virtual Currency as proprietary points that allow players to pick up additional in-game content.

While the package is labeled "Volume 1," it's unknown if this is the first entry in an ongoing promotional series or if somebody at Sony simply thought that addition might make the compilation sound more fancy. We contacted Sony for clarification, but the company is currently only willing to discuss this entry. [Image: Sony]

For the second straight year we've gotten a January surprise with regards to baseball video games. And for the second straight year, it only nominally keeps Xbox as a relevant platform for Major League Baseball fans.Read more...

The RBI Baseball series is making a return this spring with the release of RBI Baseball 14, Major League Baseball announced today.

2K Sports has officially canceled its MLB 2K baseball game series. A 2K representative told Joystiq today that it has "decided not to renew our MLB 2K series for 2014. We are very proud of the achievements made by the MLB 2K team and look forward to their contributions to our future titles, including NBA 2K - our industry's #1 rated and #1 selling basketball franchise."

The final game in the series was MLB 2K13, a game that was panned critically for its stark similarities to its predecessor, MLB 2K12. The confirmation of the series' closure comes after the publisher took steps to remove the brand from its various pages - an indicator that it no longer has the appropriate licensing obligations to fulfill.

As pointed out by Pastapadre, 2K Sports recently took down its Facebook page for the series, videos from its YouTube page and forwarded each landing page for games in the series to its global 2K website. Of the few MLB-branded pages that remain are a few of the game's online manuals, though it's uncertain how long those will be available to view.

Being that 2K Sports was the only company delivering a simulation baseball game for Microsoft's Xbox 360, thanks to an exclusive third-party licensing agreement it signed with the MLB, the Xbox One will be without a Major League Baseball game for the time being. The MLB: The Show series is developed by Sony's San Diego studio, which will launch MLB 14: The Show this spring on PS3, PS4 and Vita.

Screenshot via T.J. Lauerman. (Original tweet here)Read more...

The score was 4 to 3, two outs in the ninth, when I woke up on the couch. No one was on base. "I don't need to see this," I said. "Nah, stick around," Dad said. I had two games that day, the World Series on TV, and Hardball! on my Commodore 64. If the Los Angeles Dodgers didn't win one, I'd make them win the other.Read more...

Next week, Major League Baseball’s biggest stars will descend on Citi Field in New York for the 2013 MLB All-Star Game. The league’s best sluggers will also be in town to compete for the title of 2013 Home Run Derby Champion, and while we can’t all make it to the Midsummer Classic festivities, you can experience all the excitement and tradition of the Home Run Derby from your couch. Introducing MLB 13 The Show Home Run Derby, available for download on your PS3. We’ve taken one of The Show’s most popular game modes, packed it with 30 of the best long ball hitters in the game, and it’s all yours for only $5.99.

Set in this year’s Home Run Derby host stadium, Citi Field, MLB 13 The Show Home Run Derby features the same amazing visuals and gameplay you’ve come to expect from the highly rated franchise. The game is available now, so download today from the PlayStation Store and get your swings in before for the real thing takes place July 15th.

If you happen to be one of the lucky few who will be in New York for the All-Star game, make sure to stop by the PlayStation booth at the MLB All Star FanFest (July 12th – 16th) where you’ll have a chance to show your MLB 13 The Show skills. There will be tons of PlayStation prizes and two lucky fans will have the chance to square off in an MLB 13 The Show Home Run Derby battle… on the field, live, during the actual Home Run Derby competition.

Minor league baseball's Toledo Mud Hens—the favored team of cross-dressing jeep-eater Cpl. Maxwell Klinger—will take the field on May 4 (of course) in these Chewbacca-inspired jerseys, part of a "Star Wars Weekend" promotion. They'll be auctioned off at the games.

The Dodgers and Dodger fans want Carlos Quentin's ass on a platter but they will not get it. Not until June. But thanks to the magic of video games, and MLB 13 The Show's "The Show Live", you can hit him in every single plate appearance he should have made at Dodger Stadium tonight. Quentin is the meathead Padre who broke Zack Greinke's collarbone in a benches-clearing brawl on Thursday. Baseball hustled out an eight-game suspension for him, to keep him from facing a firing squad on Jackie Robinson Night and turning that gala celebration of dignity and human triumph into a beanball war. All players have the right to appeal suspensions and continue playing as they do, but Quentin chose not to, meaning he won't face the Dodgers again until June 3. Who knows if that really will calm the situation tonight. When the guy who done the most wrong ain't in the lineup (as is the case with American League pitchers who bean hitters), usually some whipping boy is sent out there to take it between the shoulder blades. Quentin's transgression is so egregious—Greinke was a $170 million acquisition from free agency this year—the Dodgers may prefer that he answer for it himself later. However, The Show Live—MLB 13 The Show's new play-along/rewrite history mode giving you the day's real lineups, has yet to reflect Quentin's suspension. So Dodger fans can put him before a firing squad if they so choose tonight (and tomorrow and Wednesday nights, too.) (Protip: He'll get mad and charge the mound and get thrown out if you hit him three times with the same pitcher. So I took Billingsley out in the fifth inning and brought in Ronald Belisario to do the deed for that at-bat. Kenley Jansen blasted him in the eighth.) It seems better for all involved if Quentin takes his medicine in a video game. Not shown in this video: the Dodgers won on a walk-off home run by Mark Ellis in the 10th inning. Had the game remained tied, Quentin would have led off the 11th (and assuredly would have been hit again.) The major league record for most times hit by pitch in a game is three (held by 21 players).

#review Major League Baseball 2K13 is an offensively recycled product and an embarrassment to sports video games. In my five years as Kotaku's sports writer, I've spent a good deal of time in comments defending the genre, and those who make its games, from the worn-out slur that annual sports titles are nothing but reskinned roster updates. Yet that is exactly what MLB 2K13 is, and its existence is forever an argumentative trump card to any advocacy I can make for sports, whether for a series that did meaningfully improve itself—like Madden NFL 13—or for a consistently excellent title that made largely cosmetic upgrades, such as NBA 2K13. More »

Gary Thorne and John Kruk invite you to tell the story of your road to the big leagues.

2K has revealed details about the latest installment of the Perfect Game Challenge.

#winniethepooh More »

#stickjockey When I was about 15, about the time you should begin to read serious books and challenge the accepted wisdom of your forebears, I got a copy of Total Baseball, an enormous, flaccid, yellow paperback about the size of the Manhattan phone book. I studied it at the foot of my bed next to the hardbound Macmillan Baseball Encylopedia which looked more like a social register from 1941. One was an annually changing volume; what truth it contained today may be, and likely would be, revised in the coming year. The other, at the time, was the establishment of names and numbers any decent person should know. More »

I may be the one of the few men in England who cares that the new baseball season has just begun over in UnitedStatesVille, USA but I’m surely not the only sports simulation fan to be intrigued by the release of Out of the Park Baseball 13. As with many sports games, the annual releases tend to involve incremental improvements, roster changes and the addition of minor features rather than radical alterations.I’ll list the tweaks to the formula below but, more importantly, I’ll tell you why the series matters and why baseball itself is such a wonderful gift to lovers of all things simulated.

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#mlb2k12 Major League Baseball 2K12 is widely expected to be in its walk year, the final season of a fat contract going back seven years. Unlike a superstar in the big leagues, this is not a cause for optimism that fans will see an above-average performance. Not when the performer is the one paying the contract, and not when it has been notoriously inconsistent despite having the Xbox 360 all to itself. More »

#mlb12theshow Boston first sacker Adrian Gonzalez holds down the box shot of MLB 12 The Show from Sony, breaking the two-year hold of Minnesota's Joe Mauer. Before Mauer, the last cover star for Sony's boutique baseball franchise was also a Red Sox, Dustin Pedroia, for MLB 09 The Show. Before him, it was Philadelphia's Ryan Braun. More »

#mlb2k 2K Sports is offering a cool million to the winner of a public, 8-person Major League Baseball 2K12 tournament… this April. From the MLB's Opening Day on April 4th (definitely learned something just now) to the end of that cheerfully prank-filled month, athletes (read: gamers) will be clawing their way to the top of the leaderboards, where a spot in the tourney awaits. More »

#mlb2k12 Adam Larson, the artist behind the three custom covers for NBA 2K12, has also supplied the base art of the Detroit Tigers pitcher Justin Verlander for the cover of MLB 2K12. More »

#mlbtheshow "Well played, Mauer," appears to be finished as a catch phrase for MLB The Show with today's naming of Boston's Adrian Gonzalez as the cover star for next year's edition of the game. He displaces the Minnesota Twins catcher Joe Mauer, who held the packshot for the past two years. More »

#mlb2k Justin Verlander, the Detroit Tigers flamethrower who spun a no-hitter in a season evocative of hall-of-fame names like Koufax, Gibson and Carlton, will grace the packshot of Major League Baseball 2K12, 2K Sports said. More »

#mlbtheshow Detroit's ace pitcher Justin Verlander registered a once-in-a-generation performance this year. Still, even that magnificence may not enough to overcome some baseball writers' biases against awarding the Most Valuable Player award to a pitcher. But a video game—Sony's acclaimed MLB 11 The Show simulation—suggests anyone who votes against him is flat wrong. More »

#goodreads SI's Chris Ballard and Kotaku's Owen Good have teamed up to tell the story of minor-league pitcher Jack Swift, whose last-chance season and remarkable feats from 60 years ago are only now becoming known. You should go read it. [Sports Illustrated] More »

A portion of a Nintendo Life review… There may be a limited amount of vintage games available in the eShop, but it’s impossible to see why anybody would want to spend their money on this. Even nostalgia won’t help; this is not the game you remember. Any fond memories you have of Baseball include a second [...]

Another of Nintendo's earliest releases for the original Game Boy, Baseball is a simple conversion of the classic American sport. A really simple conversion. A really simple and slow conversion...