Sony video game development subsidiary San Diego Studio usually releases its annual installment of MLB The Show during spring training when many fans are not yet thinking about the baseball season.

This year, the game maker can draw from more real-life excitement around the sport.

San Diego Studio’s full release of MLB The Show 26 comes Tuesday—and the biggest sporting event in the world that day will be the World Baseball Classic final. MLB The Show 26, available for early access since Friday to users who pay $30 extra for a deluxe edition, includes WBC-themed items in its Diamond Dynasty mode in which users amass cards corresponding with players they can then take into games.

With the WBC steadily rising in popularity since its 2006 inception, each edition of the tournament gives San Diego Studio greater opportunity to generate associated hype around its game. It’s a tangible example of the relationship between a sport’s real-world happenings and video game engagement.

“If you look at our cover athlete, it’s Aaron Judge, who not only won another MVP, [but] he’s also the captain of Team USA, and there are WBC elements on the cover of our game,” San Diego Studio director of brand strategy Ramone Russell said in a video interview. “We were very intentional in making sure we were trying to celebrate the World Baseball Classic in very specific ways in the game launch.”

Russell said his team took more than eight months developing WBC assets, such as a virtual Tokyo Dome, meaning some of San Diego Studio’s developers began work on MLB The Show 26 right after MLB The Show 25 shipped.

While the game developer has previously integrated other tentpole baseball events, such as MLB’s special Field of Dreams game that brought a virtual cornfield-surrounded diamond to The Show, the stakes are higher with the WBC.

“We know the first thing that a lot of people do will be to jump into our WBC content,” Russell said.

On one hand, not fully releasing this year’s game until the day of the WBC final arguably limits the extent San Diego Studio can cash in on the event.

On the other hand, from San Diego Studio’s perspective, the timing marries the competition’s excitement peak to release day, when a high percentage of total copies are sold. Plus, the group has been using the WBC in promotional materials over the past two weeks to build anticipation for launch, and the early release period coincides with the WBC quarterfinals and semifinals. (Team USA reaching the knockout round after a close call salvaged some of its promo plans).

In any case, this is a better timeline for the developer than the last WBC.

In 2023, the competition ended on March 21—three days before MLB The Show 23’s early access period began and a week before the game’s full release.

International tournaments in sports games

Gaming companies used to release standalone console games for international sporting events. At least one came out for every Olympics—both Summer and Winter—from 1992 through 2012. Same for every FIFA World Cup from 1986 through 2010.

Since then, these standalone console titles have mostly disappeared, been shoehorned into an Ultimate Team mode or moved to mobile. The economics for standalone games based on international tournaments, developers have concluded, don’t add up.

Baseball fans never got a video game solely devoted to the WBC, in part because the WBC didn’t debut until 2006.

The WBC integration in MLB The Show 26 is notably limited to Diamond Dynasty, leaving some gamers craving more.

Russell said the annual release cadence made it difficult for San Diego Studio to insert WBC content beyond the one mode, which is akin to Ultimate Team in EA Sports titles and MyTeam in Take-Two Interactive’s NBA 2K.

“We don’t have as much time as other non-yearly titles like the same issues that we have are the same issues that other sports games have,” he said. “This year, thinking about our entire feature set, it made the most sense for our resources and our development team to just really focus on [Diamond Dynasty].”

Still, Russell left the door open to broader WBC implementations in future editions, saying “we’re always thinking about the future and how we can expand upon things.”

He added that loyal The Show gamers have the right to set high expectations, even if they might not sympathize with the time constraints developers face.

“They don’t care [about the constraints], and they shouldn’t care, because they’re paying for a product,” Russell said. “It’s our job to make sure that what we’re putting in that product makes it an easy decision for them [to play]. We’re making video games; we’re not building hospitals here. … We want to provide enjoyment for our fans.”