MVP Baseball was one of the first victims of developers signing exclusivity deals with major sports leagues.
I played tons of 2015 on PC. I remember it had a strong modding scene for many years after the franchise's demise.
I switched over to 2K Baseball on Xbox until that series ended too, but the 2K series seemed more like annual roster updates rather than anything innovative.
Probably one of the biggest issues with baseball video games for purists is the fact that it's hard to incorporate walks into gameplay in a realistic manner.
Taking walks as a human player requires lots of batting eye skill and practice, but also requires an AI opponent that will throw enough balls to walk the player occasionally, especially on Ball 3.
When the human player is pitching, there also has to be a mechanism that makes their player wild enough that pitches don't always go where intended and the player can't always throw a strike on command on Ball 3.
Another issue is lack of foul balls in video games. There are way more foul balls per inning/at bat in real life that often isn't replicated in games to sacrifice realism for better gameplay.
But without realistic levels of foul balls, pitch counts remain too low, at bats are resolved too quickly and the player is often rewarded too consistently for swinging with abandon.
MVP Baseball was one of the first victims of developers signing exclusivity deals with major sports leagues.
I played tons of 2015 on PC. I remember it had a strong modding scene for many years after the franchise's demise.
I switched over to 2K Baseball on Xbox until that series ended too, but the 2K series seemed more like annual roster updates rather than anything innovative.
Probably one of the biggest issues with baseball video games for purists is the fact that it's hard to incorporate walks into gameplay in a realistic manner.
Taking walks as a human player requires lots of batting eye skill and practice, but also requires an AI opponent that will throw enough balls to walk the player occasionally, especially on Ball 3.
When the human player is pitching, there also has to be a mechanism that makes their player wild enough that pitches don't always go where intended and the player can't always throw a strike on command on Ball 3.
Another issue is lack of foul balls in video games. There are way more foul balls per inning/at bat in real life that often isn't replicated in games to sacrifice realism for better gameplay.
But without realistic levels of foul balls, pitch counts remain too low, at bats are resolved too quickly and the player is often rewarded too consistently for swinging with abandon.