"Out of the Park Baseball 16" developer Out of the Park Developments has obtained the Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball licenses, bringing real MLB teams and more to the game, the studio announced today.
This will be the first game in the history of the well-regarded "Out of the Park Baseball" series, which debuted in 1999, to feature the names, logos and jerseys for real-life professional baseball teams and leagues. The license from MLB Advanced Media provides for use of the official names and logos for MLB, the American League and National League, Minor League Baseball and all its leagues, all historical MLB teams, all 30 current MLB clubs, and all current minor league teams.
Previous "Out of the Park Baseball" titles have included names of MLB players (by comparison, fantasy sports websites use real player names but don't have to license them), but they've never included MLB branding or the actual teams.
"Getting OOTP officially licensed has been in the back of my mind for a long time," said the OOTPB creator Markus Heinsohn in a blog post on the Out of the Park Baseball website. According to Heinsohn, MLB Advanced Media has been aware of the franchise and previously asked Out of the Park Developments about licensing, but that idea seemed like it would be out of the small studio's league. However, in recent years the growing sales and recognition of the series led the studio to ask about obtaining the license, and Heinsohn said MLB Advanced Media "had pretty reasonable terms."
"Out of the Park Baseball 16" will be available in March on Linux, Mac and Windows PC.