MLB The Show 21 will be available on Xbox Game Pass the day it launches

An historic moment has become even more historic after Xbox announced that Sony San Diego’s MLB The Show 21 is coming to Game Pass on day one.

Both the Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S versions of the game will launch on the subscription service on April 20th, and Game Pass Ultimate subscribers will also have access to the game on Android phones and tablets via Xbox Cloud Gaming.

There’s plenty of room to speculate as to how Xbox managed to not only get the game on its platforms, but add it to Game Pass, too. Murmurs are that Major League Baseball took a strong position to getting the long-running baseball sim—which is a great marketing tool for a league that’s lost viewers over the years—on more than one platform.

Along those lines, in the blog post announcing the The Show‘s imminent Game Pass arrival, MLB senior VP of games and VR wrote that “this is an incredible moment for all of us and bringing the franchise to more players and baseball fans is something that we at MLB, MLB Players, Inc., and Xbox are all excited about.” Interestingly, the Microsoft Store lists the game’s publisher as the MLB, while the PlayStation Store lists it as Sony Interactive Entertainment.

The Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 will run the game at 4K/60 FPS. The new Stadium Creator mode is also exclusive to the next-gen versions. However, MLB The Show 21 does feature cross-play and cross-progression, so even if your buddies are stuck with the last-gen consoles, you can still face off against one another.