Interview by: William Abner

Sony’s baseball franchise has been king of the hill for several years – so what do you do for an encore? You make another version, of course. We got a chance to talk with the team right before the latest version ships to get some last minute info on what you can expect from MLB 10 The Show

With the commercial and critical success of The Show—what goes into the planning each and every year? What does the team do when trying to focus for each version? I ask because The Show is such a solid franchise, I can only assume it’s a real plus to not have to start from scratch and instead simply build upon what you have created.

Our goal each year with ‘The Show’ franchise is to not only be the best baseball game in the market but also the best interactive sports game. To achieve this goal, we feel it is very important to make a dedicated effort to improve and expand upon ALL areas of the game each year. MLB 10 The Show continues to raise the overall level of detail and realism while offering an even deeper feature set. We hope you enjoy it.

That said – what was the main focus for the game this year? I know realism is always a big sticking point with the team—and the fans of this series in particular.

There are always various focus areas, but this year we’ve added 22,000 in-game animations and over 4,800 gameplay animations, bringing the level of realism to new heights. We also have our new Catcher Mode, a full All-Star Break with the Home Run Derby and All-Star Futures Games, User Controlled Pick-Offs, as well as various details to improve stadium ambiance like the addition of HR/splash counters, fireworks, steam, noisemakers, towels, thunder sticks, working digital and analog clocks, crowd reaching over the rails, and crowd detail, such as interaction with vendors and placing K signs. As for my favorite, I like so many of our new animations it’s really hard to choose. Let’s go with the new climbing the wall to rob HRs.

What sort of online modes can we expect this year? What strides have been made to make online play more accessible?

There is a Completed Leagues view where any completed league can be seen. In terms of viewing in-progress leagues, users have always been able to see Current Leagues. Now, at the new The Show Community website, users will be able to see full details of all leagues.

Now, for online season league functionality...Our goal coming into this year was to give online users the same season experience online as they’ve come to expect in the offline season mode. However, there are still the Online League specific features, like creating a Draft or Non-Draft league. The draft still allows for 6-30 teams, with some audio queues for “your turn” and “countdown.” A few new Create League settings: Custom Sliders, Presentation Mode, Umpire Balls and Strikes, Ejections, Home Run Celebration.

The huge change this year is the addition of all player stats for your full 40-man roster. You will get access to the full “Around the League” screens, including Playoff Brackets, Standings, Statistics, Team Rankings, League Leaders and Awards. Just to relay the amount of data available in Online Leagues, we are potentially talking about 30 teams, with 40 players, each with 70+ stats!

We are including a lot of Team Management options/requirements. Under Team Management you can set your lineup, defensive positioning, pitching rotation and more. One of the keys to making a season mode realistic is the concept of energy and managing your team with energy considered. Injuries, disabled list, trades and free agents are all now a part of Online Season Leagues. Unfortunately, injuries are a part of the game.

Online League management tools available that you wouldn’t need in an offline league. First, you can drop a user from your league. New to this year, you can also replace that user with another from the Invite Player screen. This is something that really helps a commissioner keep quality players in a league and ultimately the league progressing nicely. Another league management change is that any user, commissioner or league member can abandon or quit a league at anytime. This used to only be available while a league was in the forming stage. Now, you can quit while in season.