Today Sony San Diego announced the release date and the cover athlete of the next installment of its popular baseball series, MLB The Show 23.
The game will release for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch on March 28, 2023, and it'll arrive on Xbox Game Pass on day one like the previous two installments. Pre-orders will open in just a few days, on February 6.
As mentioned above, we also get the reveal of the cover athlete, Miami Marlins' center fielder and second baseman Jasrado Prince Hermis Arrington "Jazz" Chisholm Jr.
We also hear that the game will support cross-platform gameplay, cross-saves, and cross-progression among all of its platforms via a dedicated MLB The Show account.
A collector's edition will be revealed on February 2, and the PlayStation version will include dual entitlement for PS4 and PS5. If you want to upgrade a standard PS4 version to PS5, you'll need to pay the usual $10 Sony appears to be so fond of.
The announcement comes with a trailer featuring Chisholm's journey "from sandlot in the Bahamas all the way to the majors."
If you're unfamiliar with the MLB The Show franchise, it debuted in 2006 with MLB 06: The Show for PlayStation 2 and PSP, albeit it traces its origin back to the MLB (without any show) series by 989 Studios, which debuted all the way back in 1997 with MLB '98 on the original PlayStation.
While it's developed by a first-party PlayStation studio, the MLB basically strongarmed Sony into making the series multiplatform starting in 2021, when it was released on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, and Xbox One. An additional Nintendo Switch version debuted last year.