DigitalBattle.com

SCEA today announced that they are continuing their MLB franchise with MLB 08 The Show for the PS2, PS3 and PSP. The next iteration in the baseball franchise is in developed at SCEA San Diego Studios and will introduce a more immersive Road the Show mode. Here’s the deal:

As gamers attempt to make a starting line-up in the Big Leagues, playing on both offense and defense from a custom-created player’s perspective, a more robust dynamic goal system and a new career advancement system will determine when a player is eligible for a promotion. Additionally, custom-created players are more interactive. As a position player, gamers will be able to further adjust that players positioning, catchers will endure more defense situations, and pitchers will now experience mound visits with user interaction – all making Road to The Show mode even more realistic.

The game will feature more than 3000 individual player animations, including personalized stances, pitching animations, individual swings and more. Additionally, it will include Umpire personalities combined with interactive hot and cold zones and player-scaled strike zones, release point pitching combined with adaptive pitching intelligence and more. Here’s even more:

Providing players with some additional performance incentives, the MLB franchise introduces the new Progressive Batting Performance feature, which will both reward players for superior performance and penalize them for hitting slumps. Specific to each individual batter, players will be rewarded with slight contract bonuses, or punished with slight decreases in contract, based on how that batter that performs beyond his “natural ability” while under user control. Adding to the online feature set, which includes customizable Online League Play with up to 30 teams, scrolling MLB Score Ticker and more, MLB 08 THE SHOW introduces SCOUT (SportsConnect Online User Tracking), which allows gamers to set and store their game preferences on the MLB server, and then enables the system to look for a Quick Match with opponents that fit similar competitive criteria.

The game will also serve up new pitcher/batter analysis, both in-game and post-game. It will also allow PS3 players to have their own custom soundtrack. Finally, it will include EyeToy functionality. It is due out during Spring 2008.