It’s that time of year again…Major League Baseball’s Midsummer Classic, where the best and brightest stars will battle it out for bragging rights and home-field advantage in the World Series. For this year’s prediction, we’ve tapped the top-rated, most authentic resource available – MLB 11 The Show. What did we find out? After simulating tonight’s 2011 All-Star Game, the win will go to the National League All-Stars, who will make it two in a row after a 13-year winless streak, hanging on to beat the American League by a score of 5-3 at Chase Field in Phoenix, Arizona.

Here’s a look at some highlights from the game. A sneak peak was also posted on ESPN.com yesterday…

As you can see, Boston’s Adrian Gonzalez opened the scoring with an RBI single, but the National League wasted little time in re-taking the lead behind an RBI single from Matt Kemp and Ryan Braun’s solo homer. Pitching on both sides dominated the middle innings, until the bottom of the sixth when the NL loaded the bases, and Colorado’s Troy Tulowitski cleared them with a booming double. Still, the 5-1 lead was far from secure. The AL chipped away behind RBIs from reserves Asdrubal Cabrera and Michael Young. Though the AL would bring the tying run to the plate in both the eighth and ninth innings, the National League’s bullpen would hold fast, with Atlanta’s Jonny Venters nailing down the final out for the victory.

With two hits and three RBIs, Tulowitski took home MVP honors. Justin Upton, the D’backs lone representative, made his hometown fans proud with a single and a nice running catch late in the game.

This was the ninth time in the last ten years that the All-Star game was decided by two runs or less, and this time, the National League had just enough to win the battle of baseball’s best.

MLB 11 The Show is the top-rated, most authentic baseball game available. Find out tonight if our prediction was accurate.

Enjoy the game!

First of all, LittleBigPlanet fans – a congratulations is in order. Thanks to all of you, we recently hit a very cool milestone – more than FOUR MILLION LittleBigPlanet levels (LBP1 & LBP2) have now been shared online by players around the world.

Four million – or to be exact, 4,141,742! To give you a sense of how big that number is, if you played LBP straight for 12 hours a day and only played each level for 5 minutes, it would take you more than 78 years to play through all of them. WOW!

Here’s a message of appreciation to all of you from the folks over at Media Molecule…

“For us the most exciting thing has always been seeing what the community does with a LittleBigPlanet game when they get their hands on the new features and tools. We’re constantly delighted – and amazed – by their ingenuity and creativity, and it’s so inspiring to see the level of affection that exists for LittleBigPlanet amongst fans around the world.”

Contraption Challenge 13

Next up – the LittleBigPlanet Contraption Challenge has returned! If you have no idea what I’m talking about the Contraption Challenge is a series of tasks to test and reward the creativity of the LBP nation, coordinated by community members Nuclearfish, Chimpanzee, and other members of the PlayStation Community Team.

This specific challenge is to construct a working submarine – see full details on our European team’s forum here. The closing date for the contest is this Sunday, April 17th so feel free to check check out some of the great submissions on lbp.me using this handy link.

If you only look at one thing this week, check out the teaser trailer for the new series of Contraption Challenges, in case you didn’t see it a couple of weeks ago – it’s pretty awesome.

Upcoming Downloadable Costumes
Finally, an update on some of the imminent downloadable goodness coming to LittleBigPlanet 2. Our next release on the PlayStation Store will be the Tron: Evolution Minipack, which will be released on April 26th for $2.99. In the pack you’ll get two brand new costumes, plus a batch of handy new stickers – here’s some shiny neon pics…

May will see the release of the Killzone 3 Minipack and I couldn’t resist giving you a sneak peak at one of the two costumes from the pack, probably one of the coolest LBP costumes I’ve seen. Behold, the Hazmat Trooper…

Combine this together with the original Killzone costume kit (which is fully compatible with LittleBigPlanet 2, remember) and you’ll have all the tools to recreate the battle for Helghan down to the finest detail. What could be better than that?

Baseball season is finally here! As we begin to watch our favorite teams go at it on the diamond, I’d like to show you our newest MLB 11 The Show trailer, focusing on our Home Run Derby mode using PlayStation Move.

You can still play Home Run Derby using the DualShock controller, but this year we’ve really upped the ante, allowing players to now use the PlayStation Move controller in the same way that you would swing a baseball bat. You can play a quick three-out Derby against a buddy or make the experience a bit longer with five or ten outs, using up to eight sluggers in total.

I’ve had a lot of practice playing and I have to tell you, it feels really good to swing for the virtual fences and hit one out of the park. And, if you don’t trust me, have a look at our cover athlete Joe Mauer taking some cuts on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Not a surprise, but Mauer edged out Jimmy in a HR Derby duel by a score of 1-0.

Well played Mauer!

Sports fans -

The boys of summer go back to work today as select stadiums around the country unlock their doors for MLB Opening Day. So, to kick off the baseball season we thought it’d be fitting for you to hear from a former big leaguer, someone who’s been in the trenches and powered through the grind of a 162 game season. Therefore, I’m pleased to introduce our good friend Eric Karros, who joins the MLB 11 The Show broadcast booth this year. Karros, the 1992 National League Rookie of the Year and former Los Angeles Dodger first baseman, completes our commentary trio, throwing his hat into the ring with The Show veterans Matt Vasgersian and Dave Campbell. Certainly no stranger to the limelight, Karros currently works as an MLB color commentator for FOX, as well as KCAL-TV in Los Angeles, where he’s part of the pre-game show for Dodger games. Since signing on to be a part of MLB 11, Karros made multiple visits down to our San Diego Studio for voice-over sessions to record the very lines and commentary that you hear in the new game. During a visit back in January, Eric was nice enough to sit down with us and provide his thoughts on The Show and what it’s like to now be immortalized in a sports video game. We put together a video of the session that we’d like to share with everyone. It can also be seen on ESPN.com who recently posted it along with an interview.

Welcome to The Show!

Sports fans –

The MLB season is about to get underway so for those looking for some last minute advice on which players to target in your fantasy baseball drafts, we simulated the 2011 season using MLB 11 The Show to offer a bit of help. You definitely want to grab guys who will be atop the Triple Crown categories to rack up the fantasy points, so for hitters, look for Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols to have another beast of a season with 50+ Home Runs and nearly 120 RBIs. Also, look for Rockies outfielder Carlos Gonzalez to have a strong follow-up to last year’s breakout season, along with Joey Votto, who should hit around .320 with 45+ Home Runs and over 100 RBIs. On the mound, you’ll want to grab hurlers who can get you wins, strikeouts, and a low ERA, so look for aces C.C. Sabathia (20 wins), Tim Lincecum (250 strikeouts), and Felix Hernandez (2.50 ERA) to be the cream of the crop this year. For the rest of our picks courtesy of MLB 11 The Show, check out our predictions trailer on MLB.com, as well as recent posts about our simulation on USAToday.com and the Wall Street Journal. We also have the video available here for your viewing pleasure above, take a look!

Welcome to The Show!

Happy Friday LBP fans –

Since our January LittleBigPlanet 2 release, there are more and more awesome LBP2 levels being uploaded every day, so many in fact that we’re getting very close to a fantastic milestone, which we’ll hopefully be able to share details on very soon. Until then, a big thank you to all of the creators out there – great work!

This week though, we wanted to give you all a sneak peak at some of the DLC planned for LittleBigPlanet 2 over the next few months. As all of the loyal original LittleBigPlanet players will remember, we always like to ensure that there is plenty of new content to freshen up your creations or just keep your Sackboy looking sharp. For starters, be sure to pick up your free St. Patrick’s Day costume from the PlayStation Store this week. It’s Sackboy’s yearly chance to show his Irish spirit – you wouldn’t want to deprive him of that, would you? There will be plenty more free DLC costumes throughout the year, so keep your eyes peeled.

Last week, the Even More Animals costume pack was released to ensure that those of you who weren’t able to pick up the LittleBigPlanet 2 Collector’s Edition have the option of dressing up your Sackboy as a Cobra, Mandrill, Crocodile, or Vulture. The individual costumes are $0.99 each, while the four pack bundle is available for $2.99.

Looking ahead to next month, you’ll get the chance to take your Sackboy on a journey into The Grid with the Tron: Evolution mini-pack. Featuring characters from the game that serves as a prequel to last year’s Tron: Legacy blockbuster movie, this pack will contain two brand new costumes—Anon and Abraxas—plus plenty of sleek and stylish Tron-themed stickers to decorate your levels.

You’ll also be seeing plenty of costumes and kits based around other PlayStation characters this year so look out for the brand new Killzone 3 mini-pack coming soon featuring Rico and a very cool looking Hazmat Trooper. But, what better way to kick things off than with some indisputable PlayStation icons? Next week we’ll be releasing three pairs of costumes based alongside the release of PlayStation Move Heroes on PS3 – Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, and Sly & Bentley. Each pack of two will be on sale for $2.99.

Some of you may have also picked up on Media Molecule mentioning a future PlayStation Move DLC pack in recent media interviews. Well, the team is indeed working on this, a VERY exciting pack that will be coming later this year so stay tuned for details.

Finally, moving away from DLC, as part of the Make.Believe campaign this year, our Sony colleagues have put together a cool new behind the scenes documentary that tells the story of how two members of the Media Molecule team came to be working at the studio. As you can see, neither John nor Christophe were originally working in the games industry, but after the right people noticed their creative wizardry within LittleBigPlanet, something amazing happened…have a look!