Review: MLB.com At Bat 2010 for iPad
by Staff Writer
May 13, 2010
Overview
MLB.com At Bat 2010 for the iPad is the official app from Major League Baseball giving you live updates for all 162 games of every team. The app has been redesigned for the iPad to take advantage of the larger screen to give you a virtual simulation of the live action. For every game you see a representation of the batter as well as pitch track plus access to lineups, live summary, box score, and batter and pitcher stats.
Features
The app features every game to give you the full virtual interface with access to every aspect of a baseball game you could imagine all via pop-ups. The app provides gameday audio of every single game allowing you to choose home or away. You can have access to gameday video if you’re a subscriber to MLB.TV which is at minimum $90/year or $20/month.The Good
At Bat 2010 presents a great interface taking full advantage of the iPad. It’s the best possible way to present baseball without the actual video. The app presents everything you could possibly want to know in a baseball game in one great looking package.
When you launch the app you’re presented with a game that shows you the inning by inning scoreboard plus men on base and balls and strike count. Then the main window shows a virtual field with the batter’s box from the view of behind home plate. The current batter is a virtual representation, and there’s a pitch tracker.
At the bottom both lineup cards are included that pop-up when you tap on them. Also included are details of the current batter and pitcher, and you can tap on either one for their game and season stats to appear. The app also pops up the live pitch track, as well as box score, game summary, and who’s in the field.
The app gives you all this information in the beautiful interface for every game this season, and you can switch between games at will. All games are shown at the top with the current score, inning, and runners on. This is truly the MLB headquarters.
During any game highlights appear of scoring plays or great defensive plays which you can watch while the main virtual representation continues. The app also features news sorted by the entire league or a specific team, plus you can view standings.
A great feature is that you can listen to either home or away broadcast of the gameday audio. Not only that, but you can launch the audio into safari for it to play in the background as you use other apps. It’s great to listen to the game while typing in pages, surfing the internet, or playing games.
The Bad
The biggest problem is that the app costs $14.99, and only provides a virtual interface. You don’t get video with this app, and that requires a pretty hefty subscription fee. On top of that the app provides a free game a day, and once it was my local team, the Dodgers, but it was blacked out in my area, and subscription users are subject to the same blackout restrictions according to the terms & conditions. The app does provide a great interface to provide all kinds of baseball information, but it’s not an app you will sit in, and slowly watch the pitch track appear. You’re not going to handcuff yourself in this one app for the slow progression of baseball when you could be using your iPad for anything else.
Baseball is the type of sport that you have in the background while you’re doing something else, and can only watch pitch by pitch if there’s a number of runners on and/or a crucial situation. Without video though the app really doesn’t provide much incentive to stay in this app, and it’s simply just checking in on the score, and leaving.
The gameday audio helps the app a lot, but it’s not enough for an app for $14.99. If you’re just going to check the score the Scorecenter XL app provides a nice interface to see the game play by play and pitch track.
