Article by: William Abner

Let’s recap.

Over the past several years, 2k Sports’ baseball franchise continued to decline despite having basically free run on the Xbox 360 due to the ever so fun licensing wars between it and EA Sports; all the while Sony’s game, MLB: The Show, continued to grow its brand both financially and in quality. Last year, 2K Sports decided enough was enough and decided to start over. MLB 2K10 was an important game for the franchise and while it didn’t quite match up with The Show, it clearly took steps in the right direction.

Fast forward to today and MLB 2K11 is trying to build upon the strides made last year and turn the franchise into a legitimate alternative to Sony’s PS3 baseball behemoth.

The conference call was conducted by Senior Brand Manager Mike Rhinehart, Game Designer Jon Rivera, and Senior Producer Mark Little. The format was the same as previous years – the press sent in questions beforehand and the team discussed them, and while a ridiculous amount of time was spent talking about the million dollar giveaway, the rest of the call was informative, as many times these calls turn into fact sheet regurgitation, but here I actually learned some stuff.

Here’s a quick rundown of what was discussed: