Hey there, it’s Jason from San Diego Studio. On behalf of Major League Gaming (MLG) and SCEA, the MLB 09 The Show dev team is extremely excited to publicly announce the MLB ‘09 The Show All-Star Championship. The promotions team has just unveiled the details to those attending FanFest and other All-Star Week activities at Busch Stadium in St. Louis (see Jeff’s video and images from the ballpark). What we know is that you can register now here to queue up for a single player ladder which begins on August 3. The top 128 players from the ladder will be seeded into a single elimination bracketed tournament which begins on September 1.

There are two highly important points that make this a no-brainer for MLB ‘09 The Show fans:

1. Prize package is massive — grand prize $10,000 cash and running up with $2,000 in Sony gear, and

2. My team has been working with SCEA, Foster City and MLG, New York to integrate game data on the backend, so participants will not have to report scores manually. This is the first time any tournament ladder on Gamebattles will offer such auto-reporting functions!

This is the first MLB The Show tournament of this size and everyone involved with the game is ecstatic about the opportunity. Don’t miss out on being among the first to be involved with The Show All-Star Championship.

Enjoy All-Star Week and don’t forget to sign up for the MLB ‘09 The Show All Star Championship ASAP!

As part of the Pros vs GI Joes program, PlayStation welcomed a St. Louis-based Army group in to compete in a little MLB 09 tournament against FanFest attendees. The winning soldier, Richy Kohler, took home a PS3, a copy of the game, and scored tickets to tonight’s MLB All-Star game.

But the best part was when Detroit Tigers All-Star pitcher Edwin Jackson showed up at the PlayStation Truck. He took on soldiers based in Kuwait in a 3-inning game via the PlayStation Network, which was definitely a memorable experience for all involved. Jackson then stuck around to take on Kohler in a friendly game (and won). I caught up with Jackson before he had to head off to practice, and he proved to be a real class act. Do me a favor and take a look at what he (and some of the soldiers) had to say:

I think we’ve all gotten accustomed to playing against our friends (and total strangers) online over the past few years, but it was really cool to see how meaningful that connection can be to people stationed so far from home.

Here’s the cool part of making the best baseball game out there: You’re invited to the MLB All-Star Game, and all the related festivities. Just in my day or so here in Missouri, it’s very clear that St. Louis is a Baseball Town; everyone’s decked out in Cardinal Red, and fans are flooding the All-Star events such as FanFest, where you can find PlayStation on full display. We’ve got dozens of hi-def Bravia stations for players to go one-on-one with each other in MLB 09: The Show (oftentimes for prizes), but even better, we’re putting this Baseball Town’s extensive knowledge of the sport to good use.

Around the FanFest area at America’s Center, you’ll find kiosks set up with Buzz! Quiz TV (near the Chevy, Sharp, and Reebok “bases”). We’ve set up a special set of baseball quizzes, and the top scores are competing for a PS3 with a copy of MLB 09: The Show. If you’re in the area (through Tuesday), I highly recommend that you drop by and take a crack at it (after studying your baseball trivia first, natch).

So what does this have to do with you if you’re *not* in St. Louis this week? Well, through the power of Buzz! Quiz TV, you can play the same Play Around the Bases quiz, either through Buzz! Quiz TV on your PS3, or right on the web.

Here’s a link to the “Around the Bases” MyBuzzQuiz.

Think you got them all right? Hit us up with the correct answers to the *last* 3 questions with an @reply on Twitter. Randomly, one participant will win whatever schwag I pick up at the All-Star Game :-)

Continuing with the All-Star Festivities, today we’re going to hold a cool exhibition, where US troops stationed overseas will compete with soldiers back here in St. Louis in some MLB 09: The Show. Who knows, maybe some All-Stars will show up in person?

More on that tomorrow…

Now that the 33rd and final players have been selected (congratulations Inge and Victorino), MLB 09 The Show has simulated the 2009 MLB All-Star Game. The prediction: The National League All-Stars will win for the first time this century, 5-2.

The most authentic baseball simulation available, MLB 09 The Show’s ultra-realistic AI doesn’t predict a slugfest. Rather, MVP Tim Lincecum sets the tone by throwing two scoreless innings to start the game, striking out four batters. The game is predicted to include a number of spectacular plays, including a towering solo home run from the Yankees‘ Mark Teixeira in the 4th inning, and a key play in the 7th where the Blue Jays’ Aaron Hill is thrown out at the plate on a perfect throw from Ryan Braun. A combined bullpen effort of four strikeouts from the Padres’ Heath Bell and the Mets’ Francisco Rodriguez helps seal the win for the National League, who hadn’t won an All-Star game in its last 12 attempts.

MLB 09 The Show is the top-rated baseball game available. Is it accurate? You’ll find out this Tuesday!

If you’re a baseball fan, you don’t want to miss Opening Day on PlayStation. From Road To The Show to Franchise Mode to Online Leagues, there is something for everyone in MLB 09 The Show. Regardless of which PlayStation is your platform of choice, the MLB franchise dubbed “best sports game of the year” for the last two seasons hits PS3, PS2 and PSP today in the bid for a three-peat. So get yourself some peanuts and Cracker Jack and take yourself out to the ballgame.

But if tutorials, trailers and a downloadable demo didn’t clinch it for you, here is a peek at what reviewers are saying:

• PlayStation Universe
• Binge Gamer
• GameZone
• G4

Welcome to the show – now PLAY BALL!

Have you ever hit a home run to win a game or made a diving catch in the field and wanted to make a movie to show off to everyone? In MLB 09 The Show, it’s possible and very simple. Here’s how it works.

In the game, select a replay you would like to record as a movie. You can either use the regular instant replay or our replay vault (As a side note, replay vault allows you to go back to any inning or player at any time to get the exact play you want). Now that you have selected the specific replay you want to record, you can get started. On the replay screen, you will notice a notification in the upper left-hand corner that lets you know that pressing the L3 button is for recording/stopping the movie. This is important because the user must press the L3 button to start the recording process, then again to stop recording. All replay menu controls are usable like fast forwarding and rewinding your replay to get the exact shot you are looking for. You can also zoom in and out, and move the cursor and camera around to get the proper focus and angles in your movie. This will help you to find the perfect play or spot in a particular play that you wish to record. You can record as many movies, of the same replay, as you like. There is no limit, other than your hard drive of course. All movies are saved out as MP4s, and depending on your hard drive size, you can record numerous movies to showcase to everyone.

Now once you have finished recording your movie, it will be automatically saved to the XMB. You can then go to the XMB to see your newly recorded movie. It is that simple (note: you must be back out of the game and in the XMB to actually view the movie…sorry, can’t view them while still in a game). Once in the XMB, look under the Video section to see your newly created movie folder. The initial folder will show the title MLB 09 The Show – enter it to view your created movies. Your new movie will have a file name of the exact play, date and time of recording and length of recording. From the XMB bar, you can copy this movie onto a Memory Stick or USB drive and take it to your PC to further edit, or post to any website for your friends viewing.

With the addition of saving interactive replays as movies for MLB 09 The Show, you now have the ability to showcase your great plays or not so great plays into movies. It is a very easy way to let your friends know what type of player you are. So have fun and enjoy making movies of your gameplay in this new feature for MLB 09 The Show. We appreciate your feedback and know that your ideas help to make the game the best it can possibly be. Thanks for your time and we hope you enjoy MLB 09 The Show and making movies!

And to get you ready for the game’s release on Tuesday, here’s a nice chunk of MLB 09 The Show gameplay to drool over:

Online League Draft System:
While online leagues are fun, there’s nothing like hand picking the team of your team. And taking it one step further than Fantasy Sports, you can actually take your team on the field and play with them yourself.

The draft system rivals that of any fantasy sports system. It allows from 6-30 players to hold a FULL LIVE Draft, with the ability to set your draft day/time, pick timer/length, chat (and harass), view the Player Card/stats of available players, view the Player Card stats of other users in your league drafting. Another integral part of the draft system is the ability to set you draft queue. No matter how much planning you do, there’s always a chance you can’t physically be at your draft, or you may not be able to stay for the entire draft. That’s when the Draft Queue becomes essential. Simply queue up all the players you’d like to be on your team, place them in order of preference, turn off your PS3 system and walk away. The server will handle the rest. Not only will it put priority on the picks you have queued, but it will make certain you have a logical team…25 players, equally balanced between starters, relievers, infielders and outfielders.

Once the draft is over, set your lineup, have the commissioner activate the league and start playing your league games!

Online League Flex Schedule:
Finding opponents and playing games should be much easier this year. We’ve incorporated a Flex Schedule for all leagues (Draft or non-Draft leagues). No longer do you only get one series and opponent to play when you log into your league. Depending on the size and length of your league you can play ahead in the schedule. The Flex schedule is never smaller than 3 series/opponents, or never larger than 15 series/opponents (that’s right, 15!).

Not only are we offering the Flex Schedule, but we’re also offering a far easier Schedule Screen. The new online Season League Schedule screen has the same look and feel of the offline season schedule screen. We’ve added a Series countdown in schedule screen. This lets the league know when the current series expires and how much time they have before the Commissioner can resolve games. Get those games played!

We’ve also added a true League Lobby. Upon entering the League Office, you will automatically be given a seat in the League Lobby of that particular league. It’s called a persistent Lobby, and we’re very excited about it. Now you can hold a seat in a lobby, but navigate around the lobby. You’ll see a new Lobby Icon in the hot bar this year. It’s the text bubble with three dots. Once you see that blink, you know that chat is taking place in the lobby/game room you have a seat in.

There is also now the Draft Day and Time in My Leagues and League Office, which helps ensure league members won’t miss the draft.

Online Improvements:
Along with the major changes to The Show League system, we’ve made a number of general online improvements. Each year we listen to community feedback and do our best to address every issue. Since most of these are relatively self-explanatory, I figured the best thing to do would be to create a bullet point list:

• SportsCast Live now with Live Play-by-play audio while viewing a game (fka View Game Status)
• Set Lineups in Online Season Leagues (vs. RHP, LHP)
• Ping indicator in Team Select screen, before entering an online game
• New Legend skill level, requiring a user to reach 4500 points
• 4 options for Guess Pitch settings (Default, Classic 1/4, Classic 1/6, No Feedback)
• Addition of 30 sec for each extra inning
• Square to forfeit opponent instead of X (not allowing accidental forfeit)
• Ability to select a jersey in an online game
• Ability to mound visit
• Access to Quick menu (up on D-pad)
• Online steals addressed
• Quick pitch exploit addressed with a delay
• Allow both players to view the replay when one player enters replay mode via pause menu
• No pausing when ball is hit in play
• Persistent Chat – ability to maintain a seat and interaction in a game room, even after leaving. This is perfect for League Chat rooms
• Online Player Options in far more areas in the SportConnect Lobby. This is the pop-up that allows for a Challenge, Send IM, Invite to Buddy, SportCast Live, etc.

Lighting was a major focus for us this year, and we implemented a Global Lighting model. What does that mean? It means that objects are lit by their surroundings. It means that when players are in shadow, they can still get light from the sunlight hitting the dirt just beyond the shadow’s edge, or a bright wall behind them. It means that in stadiums, red floors cast red light on neighboring objects. It is another step towards that realism we all want in our baseball game.

How do we do all this? Well, I can’t give away our secrets, but I can give you an overview of our lighting model. There are several steps we take to make each image, and we make 60 of these images every second.

Starting with the stadium:

• We begin by tracing direct sunlight into the scene, with detailed shadows.
• We render a sky (without a sun), then use this sky to add the indirect sky light to the scene.
• We then trace the sunlight’s path as it bounces off the ground and stadium. When sunlight hits a surface, it takes on that surface color, bounces off, and lights objects around it. We add that indirect light into the scene.
• We do the same with the crowd (up to 50,000 people lit in place!)
• All of these steps are done in HDR (high dynamic range), and tone mapped into our final frame.

The players are handled in a similar way. They are lit by the sun, the sky, the stadium, and the ground around them. They also sample the environment to get reflections and gloss energy. The goal is to always make the player feel like he belongs to the world around him.

Pictures are worth a thousand words, so I’ll just let them speak for themselves. Scroll through the filmstrip images to see all the step-by-step (click on them to download full resolution). I hope you are as excited about this year’s lighting as we are, and have a blast with MLB 09 The Show!

Following in the footsteps of the My Slider feature, we’ve put more control in the user’s hands. Community shared content leverages the creativity of user’s like you. And if you’re one of the users that love to customize rosters and share with others, you know how difficult it’s been in the past to relay your settings to other users. The Roster Vault in MLB 09 The Show solves that problem. The Roster Vault allows you to make all your roster changes (some new to this year), save them off, and upload them for others to download and use.

Here’s how to upload a Roster to the Roster Vault:

1. Take any roster (on disc or a weekly Live Roster update)

2. Make any changes you’d like to the roster and players within. This could be player names, attributes, jersey numbers, accessories, handedness, etc…

3. Save the Roster to your hard drive

4. Connect online with MLB 09, via SportsConnect, select the Roster Vault feature from the Community section.

5. Select Upload from the Roster Vault options

6. Select one of the Rosters from your hard drive to upload

7. Name it, describe it and Upload

At this point, anybody in the community can browse the Roster Vault to find the highest rated or most downloaded Roster online.

Here’s how to find a Roster in the Roster Vault:

1. Simply connect online, via SportsConnect

2. Select Roster Vault from the Community section and choose to Browse/Download

3. Once in the Roster Vault you can sort by highest rated, most downloaded or date uploaded.

4. Select the Roster you’d like and choose to download

5. Save it to your Hard Drive and name it

6. Select the Roster section in the Features are of the Main Menu

7. Select the Roster from your hard drive and apply it

8. Select to start any offline Game Mode (Exhibition, Season, Franchise, Road to the Show, etc) and play with our new Roster

9. Connect back online and Vote for it’s rating

As well as being able to browse all uploaded rosters on the server, there is also a My Rosters section. That is a custom list of all Rosters you’ve uploaded and downloaded. It allows you to easily see how you’ve interacted and contributed to the community. You can browse and remove rosters from that list at any time.

Although we believe we package the best MLB game out there right out the box, users always want to customize and make changes. The goal is to provide you, our community members, the tools to customize the game to your liking.

We appreciate your feedback, as we try to make the best game possible. Thanks for your time. We hope you enjoy MLB 09 The Show and the new features!

We care a great deal about the people who purchase our games and what they have to say about them, good and bad. We are always striving to take the MLB09 The Show franchise to the next level of realism and authenticity as an MLB simulation. With these and other goals in mind we spent a substantial amount of time over the past several months overhauling the developer/consumer relationship at the studio. The culmination of which is our first Community Day here in San Diego, involving the MLB Development team and members of the “Shows” community.

The purpose of the event was to give fans of the franchise an in-depth look at how the game is made, and who it’s made by. We let the attendees pick the brains of the development team and give feedback on the game for future use. In contrast we picked the brains of the attendees to help give us a feel for what people are expecting from the franchise and how we can make it better moving forward.

The event is just one part of a comprehensive Community Initiative we have adopted this past year. The relationship between a development studio and the consumer base/community is one that can be mutually beneficial to all parties involved. We love making great games and I’m sure everyone out there loves playing great games. Moving forward we look to build upon the relationships we have and create new ones.

I’m sure you are thinking, “How did the event go?”

The attendees were Edwin (a.k.a. Pared), Bryan (a.k.a. Pastapadre), Michael (a.k.a Knight165), Bob (a.k.a. Nemesis), and Jim (a.k.a. Jim416), all of whom are members of various community fan sites across the net.

After the event was over, I asked them this question: Could you sum up your experience at the SCEA San Diego Studios?

“The trip to SCEA San Diego Studios is beyond what I was expecting. Between visiting other companies and Sony’s long-standing closed-door policy, I was surprised to see how inviting and willing to share everyone was with the members of our gaming community. Between long detailed discussions about the most intimate details to the joking around while watching others play, Sony really provided a welcoming atmosphere throughout the entire trip. I think the event left all of us completely impressed.” – Edwin

Edwin enjoying the game

“I guess what impressed me the most is that you guys are businessmen with a passion for your product. The facilities that we visited did not ooze gaming, they oozed people hard at work and dedicated to a game they obviously have a passion for. Your kindness and patience with us was appreciated. It was crunch time for you guys and to set aside time like that was gratefully appreciated.” – Jim

Producer Jody Kelsey left, and Jim right going to head-to-head on MLB09 The Show

“To begin, I know that Sony was a little apprehensive in letting the general public in for such an unprecedented look at the development process and access to the developers themselves. I hope that the results of Community Day allay those fears for the future. To me, I think the Community Day was a great success. It gives the buyers of the game…a much better understanding (through the members who attended) of just how difficult each process actually is and how much time it does take to complete tasks that will eventually turn into an aspect of the game.

As good a time as we had in the studios, I hope it was apparent to the dev team (and in turn the Sony Corp) that we, the Community Leaders took the opportunity seriously. We each tried to come into the event with a plan to get as much information as we were allowed to as many of the members of the community as possible, and it wasn’t just the four of us, but the entire community through us. The Community Question thread was a great example of that…but the Community Answer thread, I think shows just how much buzz it got and what a great success it was. From the comments I read…the community also saw the event as a great success.” – Michael

Community Manager Ramone Russell left and Michael right. I’m enjoying the beating he is taking on the new Legend difficulty level in MLB09 The Show.

“I really appreciate the opportunity to check out the game and take in a greater understanding of everything that goes into their development. The open access to the MLB 09 The Show producers was especially impressive in that so many floated in and out over the two days actively answering questions and considering feedback all while sharing in the enjoyment being had. It was great to have such a significant amount of time dedicated to playing the game and the discussion that came out of that. I definitely would like to thank everyone involved in putting it together and making it such a positive experience that will only pay dividends for the game and the community in the future.” – Brian

Brian far right, your friendly neighborhood CM left and Senior Producer/Designer Kolbe Launchbaugh top left.

“This being my first exposure to a community event, I really did not know what to expect. After spending some time, I immediately saw how valuable these events can be. Anytime you can bring the developers and the consumer together face to face you gain a wealth of information on where each party is coming from. I know how something like this could make certain individuals a little apprehensive because you are exposing the game so to speak. But as community leaders and having time to spend with the developers and the game only strengthens the relationship. The developer gets to see how the customer base is playing the game and we as gamers get to ask questions about the thought process of why things were developed a certain way.” – Bob

From right to left sitting down Lead Animator Chris Clements, Bob holding the controller, Edwin, Brain. Standing up from right to left Producer Jason Villa, Senior Producer Chris Gill, Designer Greg Batalucco, Producer Jody Kelsey, Director of Product Development MLB Chris Cutliff and Designer Lourne Asuncion. Bob is enthralled in a close game on Legend that he eventually lost. The room went nuts when he couldn’t pull it off.

Character Artists from left to right Eric Heim, Joel Benjamin and Michael Jones. We are all heckling Edwin because he’s losing to the Yankees as the Mets ten to zero.

In closing our first Community Preview Event was a huge success and a major step in the right direction as we continue to push the envelope of developer/consumer interaction here in San Diego. Thank you for reading and stay tuned – this is just the beginning.