PlayStation and Xbox players alike were both pretty surprised to see that MLB The Show 21, a PlayStation Studios game, would be joining Xbox Game Pass on day one of its release. Another interesting wrinkle has popped up, as it turns out that the game will be published by MLB on Xbox systems.
As revealed by game analyst Benji-Sales on Twitter, the Xbox port of the game isn’t being published by PlayStation, and will instead be published by MLB itself. This makes sense considering the game is developed by Sony, who aren’t likely to want to spend money getting their game on another system.
With MLB reportedly publishing the game on Xbox, it does raise some interesting questions about the deal in place, and how much involvement Sony had in the decision, or whether Xbox went straight to MLB in order to get the game onto their console. Nothing about the deal has been announced publicly yet, and considering how many companies it will have gone through it's not likely to be clear anytime soon.
Up until now the MLB games have been developed by San Diego Studio as part of PlayStation and released exclusively for their consoles, but this year’s entry will be the first in the series to ever come to another system. Sony itself has remained quiet about the game appearing on Xbox, although considering their role in its development it will have likely known about the deal before it was announced.
MLB The Show 21 was previously confirmed to be coming to Xbox consoles in a deal announced back in 2019, but the fact that it’s coming to Xbox Game Pass is a pretty big deal. What this means is that Xbox players will be able to get a PlayStation Studios game for free on their system, whilst PlayStation players will have to pay full price for the game.
This is the second big third-party game that Xbox has brought to Game Pass, with this month’s Outriders recently coming to the service, although it's currently offline due to some connection issues.