A New College Baseball Video Game?
A Blog by Greg
College sports video games are having a moment right now. A year ago, EA Sports released the long-awaited sequel to the tremendously popular NCAA Football 14 with EA Sports College Football 25, a follow-up 12 years in the making. About a month ago, in anticipation of the release of EA Sports College Football 26, EA Sports posted on X announcing the revival of yet another one of their dormant college sports video game series by exclaiming the return of the NCAA Basketball series. Like NCAA Football, EA’s NCAA Basketball series was put on indefinite hiatus in the early 2010s due to rising legal challenges regarding college athletes’ names, images, and likenesses. However, now that we are officially in the midst of the “NIL era” of college athletics, and the popularity of college sports video games is clear, will a new college baseball game be the next major announcement from EA?
While NCAA baseball games did not have the illustrious history that football and basketball had (only two entries to date with MVP 06 NCAA Baseball and MVP 07 NCAA Baseball), the games were beloved by critics and fans alike. MVP 06 NCAA Baseball was given an 8.7/10 rating by IGN upon release in January 2006, and the follow-up title received a 7.6/10 as well as fairly positive reviews from players. The MVP NCAA Baseball games were a response to the exclusive licensing deal that the MLB signed with 2K that prohibited EA from producing an MLB video game. Despite the success of the two entries, EA decided to focus more on their other game series, and college baseball video games died along with the MVP Baseball brand.
Despite radio silence on the topic for the better part of two decades, fans started to speculate that a new NCAA Baseball video game was possible. In response to the massive fanfare following the release of EA Sports College Football 25, MLB The Show 25 introduced college gameplay to their Road to The Show game mode for the first time in series history. The number of schools was limited, and gameplay was held to only a handful of games before your created player makes the jump to Major League Baseball; however, this marked an important juncture in the history of video games featuring college baseball. Many have speculated that this addition was a way for San Diego Studies, the developers behind MLB The Show, to gauge interest in a new NCAA baseball game.
A new college baseball video game would be monumental. The old MVP NCAA Baseball games have received a large amount of renewed interest over the past two years due to the release of EA Sports College Football 25 as well as many popular content creators, such as K00GS and KevinGOHD, in the MLB The Show universe revisiting the old MVP titles for their YouTube channels. While there is hardly any news regarding a new NCAA baseball game, the interest in the topic has peaked in the past two years, and whether an entirely new game is in the works or just an expanded college experience in a new MLB The Show game, college baseball video games are not dead just yet!
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