For the first time in the series, Super Mega Baseball fans can play with more than 200 larger-than-life legendary baseball professionals like David “Big Papi” Ortiz, Jose Bautista, Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron and more right alongside beloved Super Mega League All Stars. Baseball Hall of Famer DavidOrtiz is also the franchise’s first ever cover athlete for Super Mega Baseball 4.

EA Sports is continuing to shape the future of interactive sports experiences with Super Mega Baseball 4 - the first baseball experience from EA Sports on HD platforms in over a decade and the second EA Sports-branded baseball experience released in 2023.

Highlighted by an entire lineup of top community-requested features and six all-new stadiums, every corner of Super Mega Baseball 4 will look and feel better than ever with the most significant presentation upgrade in series history and new gameplay depth.

EA SPORTS released a Super Mega Baseball 4 Deep Dive look into significant gameplay upgrades coming to the latest chapter in the Super Mega Baseball franchise.

Super Mega Baseball 4 will introduce some of the biggest gameplay enhancements the franchise has seen thus far. The Super Mega Baseball™ 4 Deep Dive: Gameplay On and Off-Field unpacks new gameplay and community-requested features including Shuffle Draft, Team Chemistry (making player selection in Shuffle Draft even more strategic), expanded Player Traits and changes to Franchise Mode that make playthrough even more unique and special

Expanded Player Traits

In Super Mega Baseball™ 3, we introduced Player Traits and they were really well received from our community. We’ve received many requests to expand on this and add even more traits. 

In SMB4, you will find 75 unique Player Traits, including all 20 that were in SMB3. Players with traits are now much more common than they were in SMB3, as the majority of players now  have 1 or 2 traits.

Many of the new Player Traits focus on making batter-pitcher matchups more dynamic. You’ll need to be a bit more strategic when approaching an at-bat to leverage your player’s traits and to ensure you don’t fall prey to the opposing player’s specialty.

Team Chemistry

While the expanded lot of Player Traits helps make players more unique, teams in Super Mega Baseball have always been the sum of their players. We wondered: is there a way we can deepen Franchise mode and the new Shuffle Draft mode to add another axis to the equation when constructing your roster? This led us to our new Team Chemistry mechanic.

Team Chemistry sees the makeup of your roster affect the potency of your players’ traits. Every player in SMB4 is 1 of 5 different chemistry types, such as Spirited, Crafty, and Competitive. Every Player Trait in SMB4 is also assigned to 1 of these 5 chemistry types. For example, RBI Hero trait is a Spirited type, while the new Sign Stealer trait is a Crafty type.

If you have at least 3 players on your team of a given chemistry type, then all traits of that chemistry type are boosted from a small benefit to a medium benefit (or reduced from a large penalty to a medium penalty for negative traits). Having at least 7 players on your team with the same chemistry type boosts the traits of that chemistry type even further from a medium benefit to a major benefit. For example, having 7 or more Spirited players on your roster means that the Spirited RBI Hero trait provides the maximum boost to any players that have that trait, even players that are not Spirited themselves.

Team Chemistry presents new considerations when signing and releasing players in Franchise mode, and deepens the strategy when it comes to selecting players in Shuffle Draft.

Changes to Franchise Mode

One recurring comment we kept hearing from our community in SMB3 was that people didn’t like how players randomly left their team for free agency at the start of the offseason. In SMB4, we wanted to add some more control over when players stayed or left your team at the end of the season, but still maintain some of the variability that makes each Franchise playthrough unique and special. So, we added a new player re-signing feature.

Each rostered player in Franchise mode now has a Loyalty attribute that represents how loyal the player is to the team. Throughout the regular season, you will be presented with new Manager Moments. Each moment presents a decision that will affect one or two players’ Loyalty.

Once you arrive at the end of the season, there is a new player re-signing phase. Each player on your team will present to you their asking salary for next season. Players with higher Loyalty will ask for lower salaries relative to their abilities, while players with lower Loyalty will ask for higher salaries. You can choose to re-sign the player at their asking salary, guaranteeing that they stay with your team, or you can offer to re-sign the player at their current salary. However, a player may reject this offer and become a free agent - the larger the discrepancy between their current and asking salary, the more likely they are to reject it. You can also outright release players, freeing up salary that you can put towards re-signing your star players at their asking salary.

In addition to player re-signing, we have also added many new Player Development Opportunities (PDO) and more random age-driven events to Franchise mode. Some PDOs present a chance for position players to upgrade or downgrade their secondary position, while other PDOs allow pitchers to learn new pitch types. Random events can see pitchers lose a pitch type, and players can even randomly pick up or lose traits during these events. 

Finally, you can choose to have players from other leagues, including built-in leagues or custom leagues, appear as free agents during the Franchise playthrough. For example, you can play a Custom Franchise with a league you created, but have Super Mega League and/or Legends League/Creators Classic players instead of randomly generated players appear as free agents from season to season.

Shuffle Draft

While free agents and player movement enhance customization within a single league, we asked ourselves: can we create a fun and replayable way to create mash-up leagues that combine the familiar Super Mega League players, the new Legends League players of real-life retired players, custom players, or any combination thereof?  Our new Shuffle Draft mode allows you and your friends to do just that!

In Shuffle Draft, you choose a league of teams to participate in the draft. All teams’ rosters will be cleared. Then, choose which players to include in the draft pool, and select which teams to control in the draft. In each round, you are presented with a choice of up to 8 players drawn semi-randomly. Star players tend to appear early in the draft, while role players appear later when rosters start to take shape.

While a traditional fantasy draft allows you to select from the entire player pool each round, there is a trade-off between agency over your roster and variance in the outcomes over multiple drafts. Traditional drafts tend to see similar rosters between playthroughs and tend to lose interest after a few times through. However, in Shuffle Draft, no two teams will ever come out the same, and it is a great starting point to jump into many of SMB4’s other game modes.

Plan to play SMB4 for an hour or two with a friend? Jump into a Shuffle Draft, then go straight into an Exhibition game or Elimination series between your two drafted teams.

Want to mix up the Super Mega League rosters before starting a Season or Franchise playthrough? Shuffle Draft has you covered.

Another way to Shuffle Draft is within Online Leagues. Leagues can be configured to have a one-time draft, or to have a new draft at the start of every season. Drafts are done asynchronously - there is no need to coordinate a draft time with a big group of friends. You can even join the league late, draft your team, and jump right into the season in progress.

Leagues and Rosters

There have also been a few changes to the Standard and Custom leagues and rosters.

Super Mega Baseball has always featured small rosters. SMB3 rosters were made up of exactly 13 position players and 8 pitchers. This was so every player on your roster matters - just one weak link on the team can be detrimental to a championship run. However, we know that the small pitching staff could be difficult to navigate at times, especially after your star reliever took a comebacker to the face.

SMB4’s rosters include one extra slot for a total of 22 players, and the number of each type of player is no longer restricted. Most Super Mega League teams roster a 9th pitcher, although the pitching-heavy Moonstars have added first baseman Testy Osteroni. Also, pitchers can now play in the field and position players can be sent out to pitch - but good luck having success with that. Watch out for the Crocs’ Norm Fenomeno, a new two-way player who excels at both pitching and hitting.

We have also expanded League Customization to include a new Free Agents pool. These free agents can be customized just like the rostered players, and appear by default in Franchise mode before randomly generated players are available to be signed.

In Custom Leagues, you can easily move players in and out of the free agents pool using the new Player Movement feature. This allows 1-for-1 swaps between two teams, or between a team and the free agents list.

On-field Improvements

Lastly, let’s talk about changes to gameplay on the field. The scaling of our players has changed to allow for more room on the field. We’ve also improved the on-field cameras to enhance some gameplay, like our new line drive camera to help you judge whether to jump or not, and our new pitching and batting camera angles. You may have seen our updated UI in our Presentation Deep Dive, and that shows up here with the new fielder input UI.

SMB4 is very much still a baseball simulation with an arcade presentation. While the presentation has changed with all new character art, animations, and new stadiums, the core batting, pitching, baserunning, and fielding mechanics will be very familiar. However, the new Player Traits do bring additional variety and considerations to batter-pitcher matchups.  We have also added automatic intentional walks, and the option to place an automatic runner at second base in extra innings of non-playoff games.

 

The game includes an array of new features across foundational modes like Exhibition, Franchise, Pennant Race, Season and Online Leagues including: 

• Baseball Legends: Over 200 baseball legends are integrated across Super Mega Baseball 4, alongside beloved Super Mega Baseball characters. Play in a league of baseball legends with teams organized by era, or mix things up with Shuffle Draft, a new feature that allows you to draft both Legends and Super Mega All-Stars to create a unique roster.
• New Platforms & Cross-Play: Super Mega Baseball 4 is expanding to PS5 and Xbox Series X|S for the first time, including all-important cross-gen and cross-platform play in Pennant Race and Online Leagues on new platforms, as well as PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. 
• Top Community Requests: From the brand-new Shuffle Draft deckbuilding-inspired feature, to expanded player traits and a new team chemistry system that add a new layer of strategy; dozens of fan-requested upgrades - automatic walks and runners, two-way players, expanded bullpens, customizable free agent pools, and more - combine to add new gameplay depth. 
• Visuals: Experience authentic, cinematic baseball, powered by new cameras, cutscene animations and lighting provides a true-to-life environment in every stadium. 
• Audio: New crowd, voiceover, and foley audio give audio throughout the game a big upgrade from home plate to the bleachers. Plus, players will be immersed in the sounds of baseball with an all-new soundtrack with licensed and original music. 

Pre-order the Super Mega Baseball 4 Ballpark Edition to receive three-day early access and three additional stadiums including Peril Point at launch, and Ciudad de Colores and Castillo Arena in July and August respectively.† Three-day early access is not available on Nintendo Switch. Pre-order offer for PS4™ and PS5 platforms only valid in the U.S. and Canada. Pre-order offer expires June 2, 2023. Redeem offer by May 30, 2023 to receive the full duration of the three-day early access period.

EA Sports Super Mega Baseball 4 is coming to PS4, PS, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam on on June 2, 2023. EA Play members on Xbox, PlayStation, and Steam will unlock a 10-hour trial of Super Mega Baseball 4, starting on May 30.