Here's how it works - if you want your company to stay in business, you need to make more in revenue than what's going out. In order to do so, at the beginning of the year you create a budget that will reflect all costs - rent, licensing, salaries, insurance, etc. Based on this final budget, you have a certain amount of money that you can devote to various projects. Therefore, an increase in payments to licensing (for officially licensed gear) would mean a decrease somewhere else (perhaps one less developer). Someone, somewhere at SCEA feels that the money spent on creating MLB: The Show is better spent elsewhere than on officially licensed gear. That's it.
Now, to take this one step further - people ask all the time, "why isn't feature x in this year?!" The bottom line is - an estimate is made internally to determine the exact cost of adding feature x (development time, testing, fees associated, etc.) and then an estimate of the new revenue generated by adding this feature (e.g. is this feature going to pay for itself) and the decision is then made (simplifying here - you can't just add developers at will, they need to be hired, trained, etc.) whether to move forward with this feature or not.
It's always about money - and there's nothing accusatory about it. It just is.
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