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Any Word From MLB on At Bat 10?

Okay, so here is my issue. I really think BAM can figure out a better way to do this:
Right now I have the MLB At Bat 2009* app on my phone & the MLB At Bat Lite
*MLB At Bat 2009 now just reads as MLB At Bat, see the quote at the bottom to see why I would still want it on my phone.
So, if I wanted to MLB At Bat 2010, I would then have 3 MLB apps on my iPhone. That is a lot.
Also, I have a Nexus One, and if I wanted to have At Bat 2010 on that as well, I would need to purchase the app twice.
So why is BAM not just making one app, and then having the premium features available for purchase. They could even have the purchasing be done online and cut Apple out of the loop. That way they could handle all of their own billing (even combine it with MLB.tv if they wanted), and they could allow you to purchase the premium features once and be able to use it on multiple mobile platforms.

They could make it really simple, instead they are siloing all these features into different apps.

mgamber said:
BTW, if you had MLB At Bat 2009, don't throw it away like yesterday's trash just because 2010 is out. 2009 can access all last year's games via the Archives button.
Click to expand...
 
superflush said:
I don't know if this has been covered (sorry if it has, I've missed a lot of what has been said) but how do they handle the blackouts.
It is by your billing address or where you are (IP address) ... or is it by both?
My billing address is in the Philly area, but I'm away from the area for a while.
So if I was in CA with a Philly billing address, can I watch & listen to Phillies games?
Click to expand...

On the iphone app it's by GPS coordinates, otherwise by billing zip code.
 
I suspect that being able to listen to background audio means that you will be able to navigate to other games, or view news articles within the app.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16)

superflush said:
cmaier said:
On the iphone app it's by GPS coordinates, otherwise by billing zip code.
Click to expand...

They don't use IP address??? What do they do for MLB.tv online??
What if I have location off on the iPhone or on Android?
Click to expand...

If you turn it off it won't work. I think they use your ip address on MLB.tv
 
Is anyone else experiencing any problems with the game audio? I listened to a few spring training games at work yesterday, and the audio kept cutting out and skipping for some reason. I was on 3G, so maybe it was the network. I just wanted to see if others were experiencing similiar issues.
 
shambolic said:
Not quite. The $120 MLB.TV package gets you a choice of home and away feeds for all games, while on the iPhone, you'll be restricted to a single feed (in all but a handful of cases, meaning the home feed). Same as last year, yes to ANY game but no to ANY feed. So if having your own team's broadcasters when they're playing on the road is a big deal, you'll still be pulling out the computer to watch.

reference: http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/subscriptions/mobile/index.jsp
Click to expand...

Just saw in the FAQ, that you will get both sides in the iPhone app this year.

"Yes, once the regular season begins, access to both feeds will be available to MLB.TV premium subscribers"

Here we go phills!
 
nburwell said:
Is anyone else experiencing any problems with the game audio? I listened to a few spring training games at work yesterday, and the audio kept cutting out and skipping for some reason. I was on 3G, so maybe it was the network. I just wanted to see if others were experiencing similiar issues.
Click to expand...

Same thing today, it breaks up and scratches and is annoying as hell, and then it just freezes.
 
superflush said:
I hope they are working on this.
I don't want to pay $15 only for it to not work.
Click to expand...

Why not just pay the $15 now, not like they'll just leave the app out there with errors, seems silyl to wait when you can get it now, no? :confused:
 
iphone1105 said:
Why not just pay the $15 now, not like they'll just leave the app out there with errors, seems silyl to wait when you can get it now, no? :confused:
Click to expand...

That's not good logic! Lets pay them money to be their beta testers! Is it that hard to get a working product out the door?
 
I thought this app was a "steal" last year when all I expected was audio. Video came along and it was only that much better.

I paid my $14.99 already and I'm very confident this year won't be a disappointment either. Most of the 200+ apps I currently own were free, free due to a promo code, or .99. This is one app I don't hesitate taking out the credit card for.
 
purd002 said:
That's not good logic! Lets pay them money to be their beta testers! Is it that hard to get a working product out the door?
Click to expand...

Last years app was rock solid after a couple months. It's spring training right now. It'll be stable and ready to roll before the season begins. If last years app is any indication it'll be amazingly well done.

I like a lot of the changes I see so far. Anxious for the audio to show up for the Tigers so I can listen. I hate watching games, listening is pretty fun though.
 
purd002 said:
Same thing today, it breaks up and scratches and is annoying as hell, and then it just freezes.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I was listening to the Phillies/Yankees game yesterday and on top of the break up's and scratches, it would just stop playing the audio after 15-20 minutes. I finally gave up listening. I hope they fix this by opening day.
 
purd002 said:
That's not good logic! Lets pay them money to be their beta testers! Is it that hard to get a working product out the door?
Click to expand...

It may not be good logic if they leave it broken, but everyone and their father knows they'll iron out the bugs. I just think that if you know theyll fix it and make it perfect, why not just buy it and try to enjoy what you can get from it now is all. To each his own, I suppose
 
I haven't had any problems with the audio feeds. I listened to an Angel game yesterday and am listening to one today. What isn't working properly is the scoreboard screen. It doesn't update frequently. I've got to setting to change it from 15 seconds to 30 seconds to 1 minute and none of them work. Maybe it's because of Spring Training???
 
senorian said:
I haven't had any problems with the audio feeds. I listened to an Angel game yesterday and am listening to one today. What isn't working properly is the scoreboard screen. It doesn't update frequently. I've got to setting to change it from 15 seconds to 30 seconds to 1 minute and none of them work. Maybe it's because of Spring Training???
Click to expand...

It's not just the app. It's not uncommon to not have live play by play for spring training games. There isn't much they can do about it. I'm sure it will be fine for regular season games.
 
I don't mean this reply to be a dig at you or anything like that but the whole iPad/Apple community want things for free by the sounds of things. Lets see, we already get content on the iPhone cheaper than other consoles like the DS and PSP. MLB at Bat is 14.99 for the entire season and includes audio for every game and 2 free live streams per day, the gameday audio for PC is 19.99 and you get so much more in my opinion, plus the ability to buy streams for .99.

I didnt want to get into what this app has and does and doesnt to though tbh, I am talking about the whole market.

Hey MLB, I have bought your app on iPhone, can I get it for free on Android and iPad as well please?

Do you say this in a shop when buying Madden or Call of Duty for the PS3? Do you say hey boss, seeing as I am paying for the PS3 version can I please get the Wii and Xbox version thrown in for free please?

How about Photoshop, should only need to buy it for one OS right?

Look guys, if you get it for free bonus, if not please understand these are different devices and therefore you need to pay again.

Now refering to your situation of having 3 different apps, why do you have 3? I understand your reasoning to keeping 2009 version to watch archived footage and stats etc, but why the lite version? The lite version is just the free version of the 14.99 app without any of the bells and whistles so if you have the premium 14.99 app the lite app has no use whatsoever, so you should only have 2 versions of the app, 2009 and 2010 versions.

While this still might not be ideal as next year you will get a 3rd etc etc, right now the only way I could see them fixing this was updating the 2009 app and offer an in app purchase of 14.99 to add the 2010 season and you essentially then use the 2010 app and within that app is a archive tab to see previously bought seasons?

Multi-platform for free, forget it, again different OS's, features code etc = different app = multiple purchases, thats life.

Could have offered in app 2010 purchase for current owners AS well as the current standalone app for people who didnt have the 09 at bat.

Dont see why you have 3 versions, 2 is most you should have.

Integration with MLB.tv, this would be nice admitted, but I am not a developer as such and wouldnt know how easy this would be to do, I suppose one app for free (as in the lite version) could work, you could then have a 14.99 in app upgrade to the premium version for audio and live streams and/or a log in function to your mlb.tv subscribtion which is essentially the 14.99 app I believe but with all streams available rather than the 2 per day with extras being .99c

You would have to wonder how happy apple would be with this bypassing of the 14.99 split though, but even then I think 14.99 on top of your mlb.tv subscription is reasonable, so within the premium app you can log in if your are a subscriber and all of the streams work then instead of just the selected two, this way mlb subscribers get all their games live (allbeit at a 14.99 premium, but hey its an option 14.99 to take your subscription on the road, pretty smart deal imo for both parties) and apple still gets a cut of the 14.99 price?



superflush said:
Okay, so here is my issue. I really think BAM can figure out a better way to do this:
Right now I have the MLB At Bat 2009* app on my phone & the MLB At Bat Lite
*MLB At Bat 2009 now just reads as MLB At Bat, see the quote at the bottom to see why I would still want it on my phone.
So, if I wanted to MLB At Bat 2010, I would then have 3 MLB apps on my iPhone. That is a lot.
Also, I have a Nexus One, and if I wanted to have At Bat 2010 on that as well, I would need to purchase the app twice.
So why is BAM not just making one app, and then having the premium features available for purchase. They could even have the purchasing be done online and cut Apple out of the loop. That way they could handle all of their own billing (even combine it with MLB.tv if they wanted), and they could allow you to purchase the premium features once and be able to use it on multiple mobile platforms.

They could make it really simple, instead they are siloing all these features into different apps.
Click to expand...
 
To the above poster. I don't think you understood what I was saying.
Here's what I am suggesting.

1. That instead of releasing a brand new app every year, just have one app.
2. That instead of having a Lite version and a paid version, have one version.
3. That the app could be free and provide the current basic features that the Lite app does, but that you can purchase the premium features that the $15 app gets you.
4. That MLB could do they "premium feature" purchasing outside of Apple and handle it on their own.
a. This would enable them to cut out Apple of their 30%
b. This would enable them to keep track of their subscribers
b. They could also bundle subscriptions together (like MLB.tv + mobile app on any mobile OS for whatever price makes sense)
 
superflush said:
To the above poster. I don't think you understood what I was saying.
Here's what I am suggesting.


4. That MLB could do they "premium feature" purchasing outside of Apple and handle it on their own.
a. This would enable them to cut out Apple of their 30%
Click to expand...


That is not allowed.
 
Galley said:
That is not allowed.
Click to expand...

Really?? What about services that charge a fee and just include iPhone capabilities in it for free. Like Evernote, Wall Street Journal, and many others.
There are a bunch of free apps that are connected to paid services.
 
superflush said:
Really?? What about services that charge a fee and just include iPhone capabilities in it for free. Like Evernote, Wall Street Journal, and many others.
There are a bunch of free apps that are connected to paid services.
Click to expand...

Devs can't add support for purchases inside of the app if it doesn't use the official in-app purchase method. This puts up a wall that would cost MLB a lot of revenue as they make money on people doing on the fly purchases. The more barriers to entry, the less purchases of the subscription you will get. Plus, MLB is making more money by making you purchase these subscriptions separately. They don't want to bundle it.
 
bozzykid said:
Devs can't add support for purchases inside of the app if it doesn't use the official in-app purchase method. This puts up a wall that would cost MLB a lot of revenue as they make money on people doing on the fly purchases. The more barriers to entry, the less purchases of the subscription you will get. Plus, MLB is making more money by making you purchase these subscriptions separately. They don't want to bundle it.
Click to expand...

Yes. Good points.
 
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