MLB 09 The Show continues to set itself apart from the other MLB games on the market with its attention to detail and unparalleled gameplay. Looking to build on that reputation, the game has added several new features and subtleties that play a huge role in bringing the baseball experience to life. Incredible stadium detail and signage, wear and tear on the field, dusk to night lighting transitions, and stadium JumboTron animations help immerse users in the ultimate baseball experience.

For fans who want to take their game on the road, MLB 09 The Show for PSP delivers big baseball action in the palm of your hand by utilizing core gameplay features found on the PS3 version. Unique to PSP, MLB 09 The Show will feature "SportsConnect News2Go" which offers fans the ability to go online to select and save the latest news feeds to their Memory Stick Duo and review at their leisure.

Exclusive for PS2 is the unrivaled "Player Creator", providing users with endless possibilities for creating players, including everything down to their player's face with EyeToy. Users can also adjust their personal rituals, swings, and even emotions as they create and place themselves in the heat of a pennant race.

MLB 09 The Show – Lighting Explained

Lighting was a major focus this year, as a Global Lighting model has been implemented. What does that mean? It means that objects are lit by their surroundings. It means that when players are in shadow, they can still get light from the sunlight hitting the dirt just beyond the shadow’s edge, or a bright wall behind them. It means that in stadiums, red floors cast red light on neighboring objects. It is another step towards that realism we all want in our baseball game.

How was this all accomplished? Well, without giving away secrets lets see an overview of the lighting model. There are several steps taken to make each image, 60 of these images every second.

Starting with the stadium:

• Begin by tracing direct sunlight into the scene, with detailed shadows.
• Render a sky (without a sun), then use this sky to add the indirect sky light to the scene.
• Trace the sunlight’s path as it bounces off the ground and stadium. When sunlight hits a surface, it takes on that surface color, bounces off, and lights objects around it. Then add that indirect light into the scene.
• Do the same with the crowd (up to 50,000 people lit in place!)
• All of these steps are done in HDR (high dynamic range), and tone mapped into our final frame.

The players are handled in a similar way. They are lit by the sun, the sky, the stadium, and the ground around them. They also sample the environment to get reflections and gloss energy. The goal is to always make the player feel like he belongs to the world around him.

MLB 09 The Show, in development for PSP, PS2 and PS3, is due to hit stores in Spring 2009.