Does anybody have a possible explanation of why Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball 2016 has been so popular this year?
I know nothing about baseball, and even less about Japanese baseball league.
The series hasn't had a release since 2014, and the mobile game has been successful (iirc). It's the first solid baseball game for the PS4 in Japan and NPB & baseball generally are very popular (for example the two national high school tournaments (Koshien) each year are huge events run by the big newspaper/media groups Asahi and Mainichi Shinbun, airing on national broadcast tv & streaming).
Woah what's so good about that Konami Baseball game? Anyone playd it to offer some insight please?
I'm a big power pro fan so I got both PS4 and PSV versions. It's just a great, great version of power pro. The best the game has ever looked, visually, and the new story mode seems to be pretty cool.
Konami's baseball engines are top notch. Power Pro isn't as hard core as their other series (PYS, which is/may be dead), but it hits a sweet spot between a more sim like game and an arcade game. Tons of modes and ways to create players (some infested by PTW/gatcha mechanics though). My favorite is the Best Nine mode where you manage a high school team, and develop players over their 2 1/2 year eligibility period and hope they get drafted. If they get drafted you can use them in the other modes, like My Life and Pennant. It's fun because most of the kids who join the team will be ordinary players but sometimes you get an absolute monster, which is exciting because (1) you can mold them into super players for the other modes and (2) your school will have a shot at Koshien.
There's a ton of content in the game, more than any recent version I think, including last year's special event uniforms. Like here's my favorite player (Sho Nakata of the Nippon Ham Fighters) wearing the special throwback unis they had one week in 2015.