Welcome to the first official OOTP 6 newsletter; and what better way to launch this publication than to present the first screenshots of the game, and to offer you an incredible pre-ordering opportunity. Out of the Park 6 is rapidly approaching beta testing and should be ready for release around Opening Day!

Yes, that's right! We have looked hard for a way to reward long time OOTP customers with an update price, but due to technical reasons, finding a way to do so has not been easy. The only solution was to create a temporary cutback in price, so we've decided to start a specially limited time preorder period, where the price of the game has been reduced from $34.99 to just $25.99! Preorder now and you get OOTP 6 almost 25% cheaper than the normal price. Remember, the special pricing will only last until the product's official release. After that, OOTP 6 will revert to it's regular price of $34.99. And with the $9.00 you save, you can buy a beer and a hot dog to savor while you play the best baseball simulation on the market!

PREORDER OOTP 6 NOW FOR JUST $25.99

Too often companies change the year on their game and call it a new version. Well, not us. Out of the Part 6 boasts numerous new or improved features. This year, for example, we have focused heavily on overhauling the financial system, implementing realistic roster rules, improving the computer AI and installing a brand new game engine. Read on for the full story:

Players now have the ability to customize the ratings scales used when viewing player attributes. You can even choose different scales for "abilities", "talent" and "other" ratings. The different scales are 1 to 5, 2 to 8 (like the MLB's scouting bureau), 1 to 10, 1 to 20 and 1 to 100. Perhaps best of all, you can choose to "turn off" any or all of these to increase the difficulty level of the game.

New advanced options have been added to increase the realism and present the general manager with the same issues a real life general manager would face.

The standard active roster limit of 25 is in place, but you can customize it up to 50 to accommodate those late September call-ups.

Standard 40-man rosters have been implemented as well, thereby adding an additional dimension to GM strategy. No longer will players be allowed to horde good players in the minor league system. The Rule 5 draft, option years and minor league free agency will all be balls the GM will need to learn to juggle to keep his roster finely tuned and adequately flexible.

In addition, arbitration has been fine-tuned and is now based on ML service. Thus, call-ups late in the season to check out your top prospects do not artificially hit you in the pocket book like they used to.

Need to make a trade after the trading deadline? You can do that as well by having the players to be traded clear waivers. Just like in real life, make sure that division rival below you doesn't claim the player(s) you're trading for first.

Customization has always been a key feature of the OOTP series, and it remains present in OOTP 6 as well. Don't want to play with option years? Want to change the length of time it takes to clear waivers, or to change the number of days required to qualify as one year of major league service? No problem. OOTP6 allows you to make those changes and literally dozens more, putting YOU in control of the game rather then letting the game control you.

OOTP has completely embraced DIPS theory and the new game engine reflects that. This greatly enhances the statistical accuracy of the game on a micro and macro level. Because of the new engine, scouting of players is more true-to-life and causes the general manager to look at the individual player's skills as it relates to real baseball.

The general and field management AI has changed as well. No longer will the AI just look at a player's ratings when making decisions. Now, the game will also take his performance into account - not just the current year, but his past performance as well. What kind of weight will the AI give to performance? As always, that's up to you - you can literally make it the ONLY thing the AI looks at, or turn it off completely.

Want to simulate different eras of baseball with a fictional league? You can now modify the player creation routine to make the players perform the way you want. Want to decrease the amount of homeruns? Decrease the power ratings across the board. Want to see more steals? Increase the stealing ratings. The possibilities are endless.

Think that it takes too long to groom a pitcher in the minor leagues? Well now you have the option to not only increase/decrease development speed league-wide, but also modify the aging routines. Again, play the way YOU want to play.

- Head to Head online play. This enables online league members to play their games head to head. The game results will be automatically uploaded to the league FTP server, so the league commissioner can easily import them and bring the league files up to date.

- Better amateur draft, with college/high school stats and signing bonuses.

- Completely rebuilt, adjustable player development algorithms result in more realistic player models with a bigger variety than ever before!

- Adjustable player evaluation AI. OOTP 6 now has the option to use statistics in the process of evaluation player value.

- Stealing tendencies have been added to the league era settings.

- Historical league imports have been improved, and the system is now fully compatible with the latest Lahman Database (www.baseball1.com).

- The recoded fielding system in the game engine now ensures that the effect of defense is as close to real life as possible.

- Better in-game AI for pinch hitting, pitcher changes, substitutions and game strategy makes for even more realistic and more challenging solo play.

And these are only the highlights of the new features and improved mechanics of the game recently nominated as "Sports Game of the Year" by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (www.interactive.org).

Help us so that we can help you by producing even better products. Please take a minute and fill out our online survey; by doing so, you'll not only provide us with the valuable information that we need, you can also win your choice of games from one of 5 OOTP Developments products!
All the information received will be saved in a database for our internal use only, and will never be given to others. Please only click the Submit button once. Providing your email address is optional, but is needed if you want to take part in our contest: We will randomly choose 5 participants who provided their email address to receive a license for an OOTP product of their choice. Submissions will be accepted until April 25th!

Click here to open the Online Survey!

We are pleased to announce that we have been able to add a valuable contributor to our baseball development team, Craig Scarborough. Craig has been designing sports games since he was 11 years old. Motivated by his love of sports game design, Craig became interested in mathematics and programming. An avid reader and programmer, he began writing his own baseball simulation based on available statistics and his own research.
In 2004, Craig and Markus began a dialogue on how OOTP could further increase its statistical accuracy by introducing some of Craig's suggested changes to the game engine. Craig, his wife and two children currently reside in Delaware.