College baseball teams will be a part of the MLB The Show series for the first time, confirmed by the MLB The Show 25 gameplay trailer that came out on Tuesday. There had been rumors and hints that this could be the case, and those rumors have now come to fruition. The trailer showed clips of players from Tennessee, LSU, and UCLA, as well as a still shot of what could potentially be Charles Schwab Field, home of the College World Series. The walls of the stadium also displayed the logos of TCU, Cal State Fullerton, Texas, Vanderbilt, and South Carolina to go along with the previous three mentioned schools. These schools and clips were shown in regard to whether they will be a part of the Road To The Show career mode, but it is unknown as of now if they will be in other modes, or if more schools will be in the game.
While this will be the first time they are in the MLB the Show game, a limited number of colleges have been featured in career modes for the NBA 2k and Madden NFL series before. Given the success of the return of college sports games in College Football 25 this year, I think this trend will continue. Per Insider Gaming, College Football 25 was the top-selling game overall in 2024 and the highest-selling sports game of all time. This success of EA taking the jump from having limited colleges in Madden to bringing back the full-fledged College Football game has sparked talks from both EA and 2k Sports about bringing back a college basketball game according to Mike Straw of Insider Gaming. EA has also announced that College Football 26 will be released in the summer 2025.
If Sony decided to make a college baseball stand-alone video game, it would not be the first of its kind. EA Sports produced a college baseball game in 2006 & 2007 due to losing the rights to make an MLB game after MVP Baseball 2005. If a college baseball game were to return, the gap between games will most likely more than double the gap between college football games, 11 years from 2013 to 2024, and even predates how long it will be between college basketball games, as EA has not produced one since 2009 and 2k since 2007. While the college football video game was canceled due to the O’Bannon v. NCAA lawsuit, the college baseball and basketball games were canceled due to poor sales numbers.
However, those games did not have the NIL capabilities that a game today would have. For example, all players who opted to have their likeness in College Football 25 received $600 and a copy of the game. If baseball players get the same or similar NIL deal rather than using generic players as the original games, it could help boost sales. While college baseball and basketball games have never had the success and popularity of the college football series, I hope these sports will capitalize on the current popularity of college sports games in this new NIL era.
Looking back on the late 2000s and early 2010s time frame when these college games were coming out, there were so many more sports games available than there are now. There were multiple publishers making games in every sport with series like NBA Live and MLB 2k to compete against NBA 2k and MLB the Show, unlike now where each publisher has exclusive rights to their league. I think the return of college sports games would be well received by consumers who are looking for an alternative to the current sports games that have turned into lazy roster updated reskins and loaded with microtransactions.
While the online roster sharing and customizations do allow users to get creative and download created college rosters and uniforms in the pro sports games, it does not have the same authentic feel that a college sports game would have. So for that sake, I hope either Sony makes a college baseball game for the first time, or EA Sports gets back into the mix like in 2006 and 2007.