[tarek]

There seems to be some talk about the 3D engine aspect and I'm in the bucket where I think a well presented, non-intrusive 3D engine would be excellent.

I play ALOT of both football manager and OOTP. I think the FM engine works great at giving you a level of immersion into your team and results. The options also vary from watching a full match, to a level of "highlights" that are either limited or extended.

With OOTP or baseball in general, I think those "highlights" presented in a 3D engine format is the way forward. It doesn't need to be much, but a way to capture critical moments in a game, whether it be a big at bat, a home run, a huge strike out, etc etc.

Another game which I play alot of is called cricket captain 2014. It's a cricket management sim and what it does amazingly is allow you to (similar to OOTP) play each ball, play each over (i.e. a set of 6 balls) and only show highlights of wickets (outs), boundaries, milestones or key plays. In that way if an over is fairly benign, like a maiden or 1-2 singles, then it's essentially a click and you move on, if something happens or is a key moment then it will give you a 3D representation of it. The immersion in that sense is great as you can clip an edge that goes by the slips for a boundary, or a dropped catch, or a missed LBW call, etc.

OOTP needs to start moving towards this type of highlight 3D engine, not a 3D representation of the entire game. With the addition of the robust and in-depth commentary already in OOTP, this would be, in my opinion, a sure fire winner rather than turning away existing customers.