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What makes your house feel like home? For many of the readers of this blog, the answer probably includes your living room video game set-up. Major League Baseball’s Washington Nationals just moved into their new home – Nationals Park – and they, too, have a killer gaming den: The PlayStation Pavilion.

Located in the “Strike Zone” near the Center Field Gate, this 3000 square foot PS3 paradise is a good reason to get to the stadium early. Opening 2 ½ hours before the first pitch, Nationals supporters (or visiting Phillies or Mets fans) can duke it out in MLB 08 The Show, test drive Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, or – and I’m sure this will be entertaining after several innings’ worth of beer sales – try out the Guitar Hero III and SingStar stages. Some SingStar singers will actually end up on the JumboTron!

The PlayStation Pavilion will be open for all 81 home games this season, so if you’re a baseball or gaming fan in the DC area, make sure you stop by. In the meantime, check out these photos from Opening Day, or watch the story by DC’s ABC 7 News. Play ball!

The grass is cut, the infield’s manicured and the lines are chalked. The boys of summer are back and it’s time to “PLAY BALL!” MLB 08: The Show officially hits store shelves today for the PS3, PS2 and PSP.

In celebration of the start of the 2008 baseball season, we’ve got a new Opening Day trailer for you:

If that wasn’t enough for you, or if you haven’t seen what all the hype is all about, be sure to click to www.mlb08theshow.com and check out recent vids from what ESPN The Magazine says is “the most realistic baseball game ever created.” MLB 08 The Show: Nothing gets you closer.

Dig in and swing for the fences…

Hi everyone. Eddy Cramm (Sr. Designer) and Aaron Luke (Designer) here to bring you the next installment of our MLB 08: The Show blog posts. This time around we are going to talk about some of the details behind Road to the Show. Coming into this development cycle, we knew we were dealing with a feature that was very well received by the public in its first go-around. That being said, we still saw a lot of room for improvement. We decided to focus on three main areas, but honestly, we ended up changing a lot more than that. We wanted to add depth to the game play experience to better reflect what a player has to do as he develops in a professional system. We wanted to give the gamer more information up front so that he had a better understanding of how his decisions are affecting his career player. And we also wanted to really improve the management system so that goals and movement happened as realistically as possible.

This year’s edition boasts enhancements to nearly every aspect of the mode, so much so that we’ve dubbed it Road To The Show 2.0. Starting with the front-end aspects, the PS3 Create Player system has received a major overhaul to include modifiable geometry of nearly every aspect of the head and face. If that weren’t enough, we’ve also added several new batting stance and pitching style animations, along with a handful of new player accessories to aide in the customization of your created player.

RTTS 2.0 features an all-new Advancement System that acts as a road map for the player’s career progression, featuring advancement goals given by the team’s manager. The RTTS player is evaluated based on the player’s current skill set (attribute levels) and the player’s statistical performance; to decide what role within the organization the player will be given, as well as what skills are lacking and need attention. Advancement goals are then given, which encompass both attribute improvements and statistical goals, for the sole purpose of improving the player’s skill set to reach the next level. The goal durations will range based on the type of player you are. Starters will have longer durations, with higher expectations, whereas bench/bullpen players might have shorter durations and slightly lower expectations. Once you have achieved enough goals, or your player is simply too good statistically to be ignored, you will then become qualified for the next step in your career.
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My name is Jason Villa, with some news about how to get your custom music playing with MLB 08 THE SHOW.

Each year we try to incorporate features that allow you to customize our MLB THE SHOW franchise to your specifications. Making a soundtrack to satisfy all players, from all walks of life, is nearly impossible. So, in an effort to please all fans of the MLB THE SHOW franchise, we are offering the new My MLB Music feature. My MLB Music will allow you to take the music you have on your PLAYSTATION 3 Hard Drive or on your PSP Memory Stick Pro Duo and create your own Jukebox Playlist. From the Jukebox screen below, just press the circle button to activate the My MLB Music feature.

Once you’re in the pop-up, you can Create a new playlist, Load an existing playlist, or Edit an existing playlist. On the PS3 My MLB Music screen, you can organize your music list by Artist, Genre, Album or song. From there, select the track(s) you want to be included on your custom playlist and save it. Take a look at the shot of the PS3 My MLB Music screen below.

Once loaded with your My MLB Music custom playlist, you can navigate the menus, check out stats, and train up your Road to the Show player with your custom music playing in the background.

Don’t worry, we still have a stellar soundtrack included on all three releases of The Show. The soundtrack includes names like, The Ramones, WAR, A Tribe Called Quest, Queens of the Stone Age, ZZ Top and more.

Hope you enjoy MLB 08 THE SHOW and the My MLB Music feature when the game launches March 4th. In the meantime, try your hand at the MLB 08 THE SHOW demos, hitting the PLAYSTATION Store for PS3 AND PSP this Thursday!

Have you ever wanted to view a great play over again, or see how your outfielder just threw out your best friend’s runner at the plate, but unfortunately, you have already moved on in your game? Well, Replay Vault gives you that opportunity to go back and watch those plays again just like they happened the first time.

Hi everyone, I’m Greg Batalucco, Designer for the MLB team and I want to give you a first glance at this new PS3-exclusive feature, one our team really wanted to add to MLB ’08 THE SHOW.

All plays in the game are now easy to access and view in the Replay Vault menu. Whether it’s a game winning home run, a leaping catch at the wall, or a diving play at shortstop for the out, Replay Vault gives you the power to relive that moment again and again, at any time.

All you have to do is pause the game, select Replay Vault from the menu, and you can search for a play by inning, player or team. Say you’re in the 7th inning and want to check out a particular Home run that occurred back in the 2nd inning. You can pause your ongoing game, go back in the Replay Vault menu to the 2nd inning and view how you went deep to take the lead. Or, say you want to see a play by your favorite player, Ryan Howard; for instance, the Replay Vault lets you use Replay by player to pick the replay out quickly. It’s all right there and easy to access. If you decide you want to see all the plays that occurred by the team you’re playing with, select Replay by Team. You can sort through each team’s offensive and defensive plays to find exactly what you are looking for. Or you can select All Plays and view every play that has occurred in the game up to that point. Once you’ve found the play you’re searching for, simply select it and replay it, it’s that easy!

Even if your game is finished we allow you to access Replay Vault at the End of Game, so that you will not miss out on anything you might want to rub in your friends face. Replay Vault gives you, the user, an easy way to view all the plays of the game and check them out over and over again. Enjoy MLB ‘08 THE SHOW and Replay Vault on March 4th and in the meantime, look for more details on new and exciting features from MLB ’08 THE SHOW here on the PlayStation.Blog.

Last week, the newest member of its MLB cover athlete fraternity dropped by SCEA’s San Diego Studio for a live motion capture session and some hands-on time with MLB 08 THE SHOW on PS3. MLB 08 THE SHOW marks Philadelphia Phillies star Ryan Howard’ s first cover for a baseball game, and as you can see in the video below, he’s pretty excited about it. The cameras were rolling, and if you were ever curious to see what goes into a MoCap session, here’s an inside peek.

The young Phillies first basemen joins an elite team of MLB cover athletes and spokespeople, including New York Mets third baseman David Wright, Boston Red Sox designated hitter David Oritz, Angels outfielder Vladimir Guerrero. Howard’s definitely earned this honor, winning Rookie of the Year honors and a Most Valuable Player award in successive seasons. Last season, Howard became the fastest player in MLB history to hit 100 home runs.

Now that you know more about MLB 08 THE SHOW’s cover star, we’ll reveal more about the gameplay later in the week.

Hi everyone. My name is Lorne Asuncion, Designer for the MLB: The Show franchise. I’m here to explain two of our new features this year: the Pitcher and Batter Analysis. One thing we wanted to improve on and enhance was the strategic thinking of the hardcore sports gamer who play this game. With the Pitcher and Batter Analysis, you as the gamer, will be able to break down the game even more by using these two features to sort and filter different categories to get accurate and helpful results. This is a Scouting Report that’s quick and easy to manage.

On the Pitcher Analysis, you can sort by numerous categories (which have sub-categories) such as the team, the specific pitcher, the batter handedness, the pitch type, the situation and the result. This sort will break down a pitcher’s tendencies on where he likes to throw each pitch and how often. A pitch plot will appear on the right-hand side of the screen to give you a visual on the selected sort. On the bottom left-hand side, a breakdown of each pitch that the pitcher throws is shown. Each pitch type is tracked by the number of pitches, strike percentage and opponent’s batting average. All of this information is pertinent because it shows the pitcher’s strengths and weaknesses for each pitch, in each zone, in all situations.

The picture below is an example of the Pitcher Analysis. It shows that Josh Beckett likes to throw his changeup very low and sometimes out of the strike zone. The Yankees haven’t had too much success with that pitch by only getting one hit out of Beckett’s last nine changeups.

Another example below shows how the Red Sox have been doing against Chien-Ming Wang’s devastating sinker. As you can see, Wang consistently throws his sinker down with positive results (an out, three foul balls, two swing and misses out of eight pitches). Because he’s been successful with that pitch all game long, swinging at that pitch might not be the best idea.

The Batter Analysis breaks down a batter’s tendencies and batting statistics by sorting through different categories and their sub-categories. When pitching, this will give you a better idea on where a batter has positive and negative results in each section of the strike zone. You can also view the batter’s Batting Average and Slugging Percentage in each area of the strike zone. If a batter hits well in a zone, that zone appears red. If he doesn’t hit well, that zone will appear blue. After a long period of time, you’ll see a heavy sample on where a batter like to hit pitches and, conversely, make outs. This is very useful in Road to the Show because you will be able to see the success and failure in each zone for your created player. This information might help your player get to “The Show” even sooner.

In the picture below, you can see the pitcher-batter duel between Jake Peavy and Andruw Jones. By looking at the pitch plot, you can see that Jones has been very patient with all of Peavy’s pitches by taking nine of the 13 thrown. Even though he was patient, the results were mixed because he had only one hit, on a fastball down low. If you were batting with Jones, you should be looking for a lot of pitches down in the strike zone as there were only two that were high.

In another Batter Analysis picture below, you can see the how the Padres have been doing against Brad Penny by looking at the Hot/Cold Zones on the right-hand side of the screen. It shows that the Padres haven’t had any success on pitches that are down and away or down and inside. On the flip side, they’ve gotten hits when Penny leaves a pitch around the heart of the plate.

By using these two features consistently more and more, you will gain more knowledge and a feel of all tendencies for a batter and a pitcher. This is exactly what we want you to take away from this game. It’s more than just a “See Pitch, Hit Pitch” type of game. There’s an enormous amount of strategy, much like real baseball and this is another way of conveying that. I hope you enjoy these two features and the rest of MLB 08: THE SHOW.