Konami buffs in-game Shohei Ohtani to keep up with his real-life track-record
On September 24, Konami announced a quick adjustment to their upcoming realistic sports game, Professional Baseball Spirits 2024-2025, due out this October. To reflect LA Dodgers’ star player Shohei Ohtani ’s record-breaking 50-50 achievement over the weekend, his in-game stats have been buffed.
Konami has been making Pro Baseball Spirits games since 2004. With each entry they have focused on making the experience more and more realistic, using technology to faithfully recreate real-life players and stadiums. Professional Baseball Spirits 2024-2025 hopes to offer players an immersive experience- letting them manage their own photo-realistic teams of real pro players, create their very own baseballers, and train hopefuls for Japan’s high school baseball league.
This pursuit of realism extends to Shohei Ohtani. On September 22, the Japanese player became the first baseballer in the history of Major League Baseball in the US to achieve a 50-50 (source: LA Times). In other words, he made history by hitting 50 homeruns and stealing 50 bases in just one season.
In Konami’s upcoming Professional Baseball Spirits 2024-2025, each player in the game has ranked abilities that influence how well they will play. To reflect Ohtani’s recent achievement, Konami has buffed Ohtani’s ability to steal bases in the game from rank C to A (source: Nikkan Sports). At 95 (rank S), his Power stat is the highest out of all the current real-life pro baseballers featured in the game.
Konami released a similarly named baseball game back in July called Powerful Pro Baseball 2024-2025. This game, which featured chibi animated versions of real baseballers, was heavily marketed with advertisements featuring the super popular Ohtani. However, players were disappointed to find that the game had many bugs at launch, which had to be patched out. Hopefully, Professional Baseball Spirits 2024-2025 gets off to a smoother start and knocks it out of the park when it is released next month.
Professional Baseball Spirits 2024-2025 is scheduled to release on October 17 on PS5 and PC (Steam) At launch, it will only be available in Japanese (it has yet to be confirmed if the game will get an English release).
