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.

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…

Army, Navy, Air Force, I haven't played with or against a service academy in years in NCAA Football. This year, the game added parachutists to deliver the ball to the 50-yard line at Michie Stadium—and I'm told play-by-play man Brad Nessler now pronounces Michie Stadium correctly (it's MIKE-ey, not "Mitchie"). All…

The Xbox 360 is perhaps the country's most beloved current generation gaming console, with millions of units sitting in millions of living rooms entertaining millions of gamers. But for all that the 360 is the platform of choice for players to devour blockbuster and indie game titles alike, its biggest draw may be…

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…

At E3, I visited the 2K Games booth every day of the show. Every day I went there, I saw these two guys from High Voltage Software in the 2K "Sports Bar," sitting in easy chairs, playing Nicktoons MLB. As far as I know, it was all they did all day.

Before setting off to claim a million-dollar bounty offered by MLB 2K11, Brian Kingrey did an analysis. He pored over batting averages, compared pitcher strengths and tendencies, examined the probable starters for the contest's opening day and the batting orders they faced, to determine what hurler had the best chance…

When 2K Sports vowed to declare a winner in its second Million-Dollar Perfect Game contest as soon as a winner could be verified, most assumed we'd have heard of a winner in April. Last year's inaugural challenge was won on the very first day, as a matter of fact.

Baseball, the National Pastime. For 141 years, it is a game whose numbers and names need no introduction. Mantle. DiMaggio. .406, 755. Ren. Stimpy.

Just to make it official, Sega's MLB Manager Online had a beta launch earlier this month, not a full launch as some posts had implied. Moot point now as the fully-licensed sports management sim is now available. All 30 Major League teams and over 900 real players are featured in the game. Scads more details at the…

2K Sports has laid another seven-figure bounty on a perfect game thrown in its Major League Baseball game. Players have had about a month to practice with MLB 2K11's pitching and fielding; the chase for 27 straight outs officially begins at noon EDT tomorrow.

It's not the return of MVP Baseball, the long lost and lamented Major League Baseball title that went into exile after 2005, but EA Sports has gotten back on the field with MLB in World Series Superstars, a Facebook game rumored to be in development that launched by surprise today.

EA Sports, whose beloved MVP Baseball series went into exile when 2K Sports won an exclusive contract back in 2005, is working on a Major League Baseball-licensed property, according to ESPN's Jon Robinson. Before you get all giddy, a close reading of contracts leaves the impression this will be another Facebook game.

Sitting there with my DualShock in my lap, I struggled to recall the last time a video game blindsided me this hard, much less at a point this early in playing it. I'd ranked up at a respectable rate, gained a fast understanding of my abilities and the situations in which they were useful. I was fearless and, I…

I've seen the big leagues, son. I've squinted at the lights at Fenway as the sun makes a cotton candy sky behind the Citgo sign in left. But I ain't there right now. I'm down here chewing on grass, pitching in my third game in as many days, deep in the well of the low minor leagues, where the uniforms are washed every…

MLB 11 The Show arrived on Tuesday, bringing with it a set of controls and options designed to include disabled gamers. The association for these gamers, begun by a 25-year-old college student, also launched on Tuesday and gets a plug from the PS3 game.

MLB 11 The Show's third-wheel analyst, Eric Karros, completely telegraphs this burn of Roy Halladay, who graces the cover of Major League Baseball 2K11.

Some ESPN personalities are known, and chided, for making product endorsements. Steve Berthiaume isn't in that crowd. Writing a 2,500-word guide on how to create, in MLB The Show, painstakingly accurate journeymen players from the 1970s is not being a lip-service pitchman. That is a bona fide roster editor.

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