We're One Week From MLB The Show 26

Diamond Dynasty, the associated player ratings (reminder: DD ratings differ from franchise mode ratings), and legend reveals were the main draw with MLB The Show 26 this week, which fits in with the way SDS has done it for years now in the lead up to the game’s launch.

This means it’s a bit of a mellow week for me in terms of how closely I follow, and it’s a little bit of a “maintenance” week for this newsletter as well.

We now have an official OS Account that you all can sign-up for right now. I implore all of you, whether you want to subscribe to a paid tier or not, to go that site and sign-up. Go there, click the “Sign In” button and then use either Discord or your OS name to log-in and connect everything together.

It will make your life easier on the forums and Discord even if you’re just going with the Rookie/free tier. If you somehow have no account on OS or Discord, you can make a totally fresh account at that link as well. You can subscribe to the premium newsletter through your OS account as well if you don’t want to do it here.

And speaking of which, please join the OS Discord. We have two community events coming up soon, a March Madness Bracket challenge and an MLB The Show tourney. Both are open to anyone with an OS Account (free or otherwise).

Don’t get me wrong, I play DD more than any other card-collecting mode (by far), so it’s not that I’m not interested, but you sort of know what to expect with DD. On top of that, I like to take a little break right before a game’s launch just so I’m ready to go.

For this newsletter, that means it will be a more standard “news-oriented” newsletter. For next week, the plan is to put together a fun rankings thing for Wednesday’s premium newsletter, and then I’ll have my first impressions of MLB The Show 26 for Friday’s newsletter.

If you missed this week’s premium newsletter from CM Hooe, I highly recommend checking it out as it broke down one of the best (if not best) defensive styles in the NFL today. Even if you’re not playing Madden or CFB right now, I think it’s a great piece to scope out if you just want to expand your football knowledge overall so you can enjoy watching the sport on TV even more.

Diamond Dynasty Legend Reveals, Plus 9-Inning Games Finally Arrive For Offline Folks

As for DD, the new legends (including some returning after an absence) include:

• Albert Pujols

• Jeromy Burnitz

• Keith Foulke

• Andruw Jones

• Dustin Pedroia

• Grady Nettles

• Ron Santo

• Matt Carpenter

• Zack Britton

• Troy Tulowitzki

• Fred Lynn

• Dave Roberts

• Felix Hernandez

• Phil Rizzuto

• Jeff Conine

• Red Schoendienst

• And then anyone who is in the Legends Storylines for this year

There are also likely even more legends who are unlisted for now as SDS tends to sprinkle in a couple more surprises through the year.

In general, my problems with DD at this point are largely “content” based now. There are never enough legends in any of these card modes, but DD seems to struggle with it even more than most. It feels like there is a lack of original players to play with and it leads to a lot of same-feeling lineups.

On the forums, we’ve talked about the need for more “silver” and “bronze” legends to keep things fresh on the lower end, and I’m a little surprised SDS doesn’t try to get more “average” MLB legends into the game from various eras to keep things fresh.

Every player comes with a cost in terms of licensing, but this is a game for baseball fans, and we’d be the ones who would geek out over guys like Charles Nagy or Heathcliff Slocumb coming into the game as much as the usual stars.

The other issue with DD that SDS continues to try and solve is how to get people to play full 9-inning games without quitting when playing online. I’m not sure anything they’re introducing will really fix that problem.

However, on that note, one positive for offline folks is that finally we can play 9-inning games for Mini Seasons. If anyone has ever been in our yearly mega thread for DD on the forums, we constantly lament the fact that we can’t play “full” games in some of these offline-centric modes. We’ll finally be able to, as well as having some more control over the length of the seasons.

If there is one way they’re trying to get people to play online games to completion this year, it’s with the continual ramp up of how you earn Parallel XP in online modes. Pitchers and hitters should now gain that XP at the same pace, and you should go up the Parallel levels even faster when playing online.

It also seems like “mods” are coming to your players:

So as you level your players, you can add attribute boosts to specific areas to try and make your version of Pujols or whoever unique to you. Beyond that, it was a reiteration of a lot of what we know, mainly a focus on the WBC and the addition of Robert Flores for commentary.

One gameplay note is at least at launch your PCI will not shrink on low and away pitches in the zone, and this is a change specific to just online competitive modes.

You can watch the full stream if you want even more DD tidbits:

Everything Else From This Week

Forza Horizon 6 was featured on IGN yesterday, giving us 8+ minutes of gameplay:

I am not a big racing guy, but Forza Horizon is a series that I play, so this is my most anticipated racing title coming this year. It looks great from a visuals perspective as all Forza games do, and since I have Game Pass I don’t really need to be sold on this.

Still, I think it’s fair to say this is one of Microsoft’s biggest games to come this year, and there is a lot of pressure on this game to deliver. The traffic is turned way down in this build, which makes it feel less “alive” than I think Horizon games generally try to go for, but the real joy of any Horizon game is booting up and wandering the world, and that’s going to be hard to showcase in any short preview.

Wolverine Studios has its latest college basketball game coming out in a couple weeks. You can get early access right now, and the full release is on March 13. You can scope out a demo if you want to get a taste of this particular management sim.

Another game coming in the somewhat near future is Backyard Baseball. It has a release date for July 2026, and we did get a look at it in a sense this past week:

We’ll see how the jump to a more traditional 3-D style goes, and I’m very excited for this piece of nostalgia to return.

Lastly, if you have PlayStation Plus, PGA Tour 2K25 is now free in the PS Store for the entire month of March.

Until next time y’all. And, as always, thanks for reading.

-Chase