We are delighted to announce that the development team of our highly acclaimed baseball management game, Out of the Park Baseball (OOTP), has joined forces with Sports Interactive (SI), the creator of the world famous Championship Manager soccer management games.

This move combines the baseball knowledge of the OOTP team with the experience and marketing power of SI, enabling us to create the best baseball management game possible and opening the doors to a much broader audience.

"Sports Interactive has always been the industry standard for sports management game developers, and Championship Manager is regarded by most as the 'Holy Grail' of sports simulations," says Markus Heinsohn, lead developer of OOTP. "This is the chance to take Out of the Park Baseball to the same level of depth, playability and immersiveness of the Championship Manager, soon to be Football Manager, series. The SI team is simply amazing and a great source of inspiration."

"Over the past couple of years we have carefully monitored and nurtured the best independent game development talent working on sports management simulations; a process which has already led to the successful integration of the Eastside Hockey team into our own," adds Miles Jacobson, Managing Director of Sports Interactive. "We have been in discussion with Markus and his team for quite a while and feel that now is the perfect time for us to begin working together. We believe that our management simulation expertise will help the Out of the Park team to achieve its undoubted potential, while their knowledge and experience of baseball will allow us to expand our reach into one of the world's largest and most important markets."

As part of the deal, Markus Heinsohn and Aurelio Barrios have moved to London, UK, and now work in the SI head offices in Islington, London. Steve Kuffrey and Andreas Raht continue to work for the new OOTP team from the USA and Germany. The company Out of the Park Developments remains located in Stade, Germany, and continues to produce and market OOTP6, ITP, and the Title Bout Boxing games.

OOTP 6 continues to be supported and updated throughout the year. The first version of the SI version of Out of the Park Baseball in scheduled for a late 2005 release.

You can discuss the news in the Sports Interactive Forums! There will be an OOTP forum set up shortly.

Just in case you have missed it, on April 21st we released the first patch for OOTP 6.

The following things were fixed or enhanced:

• Added the option to enable home field advantage in the engine setup screen
• Added the option to list all players during the first year player draft
• Added the option to display the play-by-play on the bottom of the game screen instead of the left side
• Improved OOTP 5 league imports
• Improved player development algorythms, making first round picks less predictable
• Adjusted scouting, players with less than 3 years of pro experience now are harder to scout, and the scout is less likely to make a mistake. Note : This will apply to current leagues, so you may see different ratings on younger players now with the patch. This does not apply to leagues where scouting is disabled.
• Improved pitching rotation handling
• Improved depth charts logic
• Adjusted calculating of attendance based on fan interest, increasing it slightly
• Pitcher endurance is now displayed if the ability ratings are hidden
• Fixed DL related bugs & crashes
• Fixed Rule 5 Draft related bugs & crashes
• Fixed CSV import/export issues
• Fixed expanded player searches
• Fixed waiver trades bugs
• Fixed various small bugs and glitches

Simply download the patch, and run the self-extracting executeable file. Please specify your OOTP6 main folder as the destination for extraction. In most cases, this should be C:\Program Files\Out of the Park Developments\OOTP6. You can download the patch here:
http://ootpdevfiles.com/ootp/ootp601.exe

The next patch, version 6.02 is already in development. We are looking for a release during the second week of May. After that, we will concentrate on developing the first full update of the game, which will include new features, most notably the head-to-head internet play.

That's right, we are now offering a playable demo of OOTP 6. The demo lets you play a league up until the league date of July 1st, which equals about half a season. Loading new leagues is disabled, but creating leagues still works.

Get the demo here:
http://ootpdevfiles.com/ootp/ootp6demosetup.exe

That's the end of the most exciting newsletter in the history of Out of the Park Developments. We are looking forward to the future of the sports simulation gernre, and OOTP itself. Exciting times are ahead!