MLB The Show 22 launches April 5, debuts on Nintendo Switch

Sony’s MLB The Show, which made its cross-platform last year, will launch on Nintendo Switch with MLB The Show 22 On April 5, Shohei Oktani (position-switching All-Star) is featured on the cover.

The launch date and cover announcement should also bring relieved sighs from fans, as it means MLB’s ongoing lockout will not shut down video game baseball, at least.

Major League Baseball locked players out on Dec. 2 at the end of management’s five-year contract with the MLB Players Association, without a new agreement in place. Although spring training has yet to begin, the work stoppage’s effect can be seen at MLB.com, where no articles reference active MLBPA players and where current programming has been suspended and replaced with documentaries and reruns of old games.

MLB The Show 22 is fully licensed by both the league and the players’ association, and the cross-platform play and progression introduced last year will extend to Nintendo Switch, Sony announced.

Image: Sony Interactive Entertainment

MLB The Show 21Major League Baseball Advanced Media brokered a groundbreaking deal that saw the publication of the Xbox One and Xbox Series X games. Xbox platforms had gone eight years with no simulation-quality MLB-licensed video game following the cancellation of 2K Sports’ MLB 2K series in 2013. The cross-platform partnership between Sony and MLB was announced by MLB in December 2019. Nintendo has been included since the beginning.

Ohtani is the Los Angeles Angel of Anaheim through Japan. He would make a great cover star. Ohtani was the unanimous winner of the American League’s MVP award in 2021, with an unheard-of, multidimensional season that included 46 home runs, 100 RBI, and 26 stolen bases, in addition to a 3.18 earned run average and 156 strikeouts in 23 starts as a pitcher. Ohtani was the first pitcher to start pitching while also leading the league’s home run count since Babe Ruth 100 years earlier.

MLB The Show 21In response to Ohtani’s performances and the enthusiasm around them, the popular Road to the Show single player career mode was rewritten to allow players to play both pitchers and sluggers. This game was launched also on Xbox Game Pass. North America’s ninth-best selling title of 2021This is the first time that a baseball game made it into the Top 10 in the region.

MLB The Show 22 Prices start at $69.99 on PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X and are $59.99 for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4. Although cross-platform play and progression is supported on all consoles, some features — such as the Stadium Creator introduced last year — are not supported on the older platforms. A collector’s edition, to be revealed on Wednesday and so far without a price, will give buyers both current and previous generation versions of the game for the same console family.