Eigentlich sollte die Baseballsimulation Super Mega Baseball 2 im September diesen Jahres erscheinen.

Schweren Herzens haben sich die Entwickler von Metalhead jedoch entschieden, den Titel auf das Frühjahr 2018 zu verschieben. In einem offenen Brief an alle Fans, kann man nachlesen, dass zwar das Grundgerüst des Spiels soweit fertig sei, aber man für den ursprünglichen September Release einige Abkürzungen hätte nehmen müssen. Damit wären weder die Fans noch die Entwickler zufrieden gewesen. Und gegen Ende des Jahres zu veröffentlichen? Da halten die Amerikaner dagegen, dass Baseball keine Wintersportart ist und man bereits mit dem Vorgänger eher schlechte Erfahrungen gesammelt hat. Dafür will man jedoch auch die zusätzliche Zeit nutzen, vormals gestrichene Features doch noch einzubauen und allgemein dem Titel den letzten Schliff geben.

Letter from Metalhead

A few months ago we announced that Super Mega Baseball 2 would be released sometime in September 2017. As it often goes in game development there were unexpected hurdles, and the September release is no longer feasible.

We’ve been working around the clock to complete the game but there are still features that aren’t finished yet. And where we’re sitting now, to release it by September would mean having to cut a lot of corners. And we do not want to give you a game that you won’t be happy with.

If we pushed, we could probably get a decent game out by the end of the year. But we released the original SMB in December so we know from experience that baseball in winter is a tough sell. We don’t want to put ourselves (or the future of the game) in that position again, so we’ve decided to delay the game until 2018 when baseball is spinning up again.

There is a big upside to this, though. Delaying until 2018 gives us some more time, especially for certain members of the team who were ramping down on their tasks. We’re going to use this extra time to work on small features and pieces of content that had previously been cut out of our scope – things like defensive shifts and additional art components. We’ve also always wanted to do a beta, but we weren’t able to squeeze it in before September. Now we’ll have the time to do a beta, test the game, and get feedback.

We know that this is disappointing news for some, and we’re sorry to have gotten your hopes up for September. We are committed to making the best game we can with the resources available to us, and the end of the day we think you’ll get a better game out of this.

Metalhead