We recently had an opportunity to drop by Sega's San Francisco office to try out the latest build of World Series Baseball for the Xbox, which will be exclusive to that system until next year's World Series Baseball game. It's currently in development at Blue Shift, and while the team freely admits that it's using World Series Baseball 2K2 as a foundation for World Series Baseball on the Xbox, a number of elements have been significantly changed.

　　One aspect of the game that will definitely make it stand out from other baseball games is the depth of the franchise mode, in which you'll have to control a baseball team on the player level and management level. When you start the franchise mode, you'll have to hire coaches and scouts for your team. Coaches--such as a pitching or batting coach--can help individual players reach their full potential, while scouts will provide more accurate ratings for players and teams. If a player has been given an overall rating of 77, but the scout recognizes that he has the potential to reach 88, then the coach can help develop that player and eventually make him reach his full potential. However, an average coach might only be able to get that player up to an 80 rating. You'll also be given budget points that you can use to draft or resign players and coaches. When hiring a coach, you'll be shown his overall rating, along with a few other details, like his price. A few smaller refinements have also been made. Computer trading has been refined--the computer will reject any ridiculous trades, but you still have the option to override them. Injuries have also been tweaked so that the game is a little more realistic in determining how long a player stays on the DL. Also, if you're so inclined, you can play an infinite number of seasons in the franchise mode.

　　Something else that has been improved for this version of World Series Baseball is the number of created players. World Series Baseball for the Xbox lets you create 20 to 25 players, which essentially makes it possible to create an entire team--though, you will still have to use one of the preexisting ball clubs. One thing you won't have to do with the create-a-player feature is construct this year's rookies. Major League Baseball has a rule that prevents rookies from being a part of the union until they play their first game. Since World Series Baseball will be released a few weeks into the season, Sega went into negotiations with Major League Baseball to get rookies into the game, and they succeeded.

　　As far as stats are concerned, World Series Baseball tracks just about every single baseball statistic you can imagine. In fact, much of what makes the game so interesting is the sheer amount of information that's constantly being fed to you as you progress through the franchise mode. Coaches will give constant updates on players and relay suggestions on what moves you should make in order to improve the team. Minor league scouts will let you know which players are looking good in the minors, including what position they could fill if you brought them up to the big leagues. You'll even have a breakdown of your finances that shows you franchise point distribution among age groups and management. There is so much information in the game and so many tracked statistics that it borders on being completely ridiculous--though hard-core baseball fans are sure to eat it up.

　　Before entering a game, you can select from a number of options. You can select classic uniforms (every team has one), and you can turn the wind, pitch fatigue (which has been tweaked to make it a little more realistic), and the strike zone graphics off or on. But perhaps the most important option is the one that enables you to turn the pitching cursor off and on. In previous versions of World Series Baseball, the second player could always see the pitching cursor, giving him or her an unfair advantage. Now that it can be turned off, pitchers can mask the direction of their pitches much more effectively. Though it should be noted that it takes some time to get used to not having a cursor, and you'll probably end up hitting a few batters before you get a good feel for it.

　　While at the plate, you'll be able to swing by simply pressing the A button on the Xbox controller. You can check your swing by lightly tapping the button, and you can bunt by holding down Y. Pitching is just as simple. You'll choose a pitch by pressing the corresponding direction on the analog stick. Manual fielding has returned and has been improvements slightly. You now have the ability to throw to a cutoff man instead of throwing directly to a base, and you can dive for balls by pressing the right trigger. It's all been kept very simple so that even those who aren't intimately familiar with the sport can jump right in and start playing.

　　Graphically, World Series Baseball looks quite good. All the stadiums have been completely modeled, al the way down to the smallest signs on the outfield walls. There are also some nice secondary touches such as birds that will occasionally fly across the sky while you're in the pitching-batting sequence. The player models also use head-scan technology, so a majority of the player faces look almost exactly like their real-life counterparts. The sound has been improved, and the color commentary has been provided by the San Francisco Giants color commentator Mike Krukow, who will occasionally throw in player-specific comments.

　　At this point, World Series Baseball is certainly shaping up to be one of the more impressive baseball games this season. The gameplay is easy to get into, and the sheer amount and statistics and information should be enough to get any die-hard baseball fan excited. We'll have more on World Series Baseball for the Xbox before its May release.