MLB The Show will end PlayStation exclusivity and go multiplatform

Sony announced today that it has entered into a new multi-year agreement with the MLB to continue its licensing deals for the MLB The Show games, but Sony also revealed that the franchise will be ending its PlayStation exclusivity and become a multiplatform series on additional consoles starting as early as 2021.

The Show has been the only triple-A baseball game for years — especially when 2K ended its baseball series after 2013 — and each year’s installment is consistently one of the best sports games of the year. But since Sony makes the franchise, it has remained exclusive to PlayStation. While Sony’s San Diego Studio will continue to develop the series, it will now be coming to additional platforms.

We don’t know which other consoles The Show will come to, but the next Xbox seems like a likely candidate. A Switch port could be more complicated due to the system’s lower specs and The Show’s technical fidelity.

It used to be hard to imagine that Sony would release a game for other consoles, but times have changed. Cross-platform play has mellowed out the old rules, and Microsoft has been publishing Minecraft on other systems besides Xbox for years. Microsoft has also been releasing some of its titles, including Cuphead and Ori to the Blind Forest, to Switch.

MLB The Show started in 2006 as a successor to Sony’s plainly-titled MLB series, which launched in 1997. MLB The Show 20 comes out on March 17. That one will still be a PlayStation exclusive.