Baseball making a comeback on the PC (and I'm not talking about a sim)

[purplerat]

I know a lot of gamers don't care much for sports games in general, particularly baseball and especially on the PC, but I thought this was great news when I heard it. 2K Sports is releasing MLB 2K9 on the PC similar to how they released NBA 2K9. From what I gather so far it will mostly be a port of the 360 version minus online play but for only $19.99.

Now if you're a PC Baseball fan this is great and unexpected news seeing as the last game released on the PC was MVP 2005 which still lives strong today due to an awesome modding community. But as even the most rabid fan knows the game of baseball (both video games and real life) tends to get stagnant after a while so playing the same game for 4 years was getting a little old. And since EA has long since discontinued support for Online play of MVP the lack of online play in 2K9 is not that big a deal. But there is still hope for a patch or mod or something as one of the many benefits of PC gaming over consoles.

And for $20 who can argue with that. Your getting essentially the $60 360 version for 1/3 of the price. The graphics will most likely be at least marginally if not significantly better and 2K has recently shown with NBA 2K9 that they will do the port correctly. If you're even mildly interested it's a great deal.

Even if you completely do not care about baseball but are still a PC gaming fan in general this is good news for you. PC sports games were getting pretty close to death's door. I'm not one to sell the doom and gloom of "the death of PC gaming" but the sports genre, because of it's dependence on big time licensing agreements, was looking to be seriously at risk. But now that 2K is showing an interest in bringing new titles to the PC along with EA supposedly bringing Madden back for 2010 (and hopefully the 360 version, not the PS2) it looks like these big time developers still see the PC as a strong market even stacked up against the goliaths that are console sports games.

Kind of off the topic a little, but I'm starting to suspect that as the 360 and PS3 age and developers want to out-do each other more and more may start to turn back to the PC to do so.

 

[pat mcgroin]

That is good news.
As you said not so much for baseball but for sports games in general.
I would like to see EA have some competition. They release a new issue each year but only the names and uniforms seem to change.
I have been playing NHL and Tiger Woods for years and nothing really changes from version to version in regards to graphics.
In the case of Tiger Woods 08 the graphics look the same as PGA Championship 1998 from Sierra games.

I realize that its all about money and piracy issues but not everyone has a game console and most hace a PC of some sort so I would think that there is still ALOT of money to be made.
If they would upgrade their programs more often I think they would be surprised how much more money they could make.

Also off topic a little: I think the portability of console games is great as my kids can take the game to a friends house and play with them (assuming they have the same console) but I also think the anti piracy protection of PC games is ridiculous.
With almost all PCs hooked to the internet it would seem to be easier to just be on the internet when installing to be sure that it is installed on only one computer at a time. Then if you want to reinstall somewhere else you would need to unregister the previous version