MLB 2K6 golden

Much like the glove of Chicago Cubs ace Greg Maddux, 2K Sports' Major League Baseball 2K6 for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox is golden. The publisher today announced that the game's development is finished, and it should be ready for sale on April 11.

This will be the first outing for the series as the exclusive third-party licensee of Major League Baseball. However, it still faces major-league competition from Sony's MLB '06: The Show, and Midway Games has announced that a preexisting agreement with the league will allow it to release a new MLB Slugfest game later this year.

The game's soundtrack is dominated by indie rock, mostly from the ever-expanding catalog of Matador Records, with artists like Guided by Voices, Belle & Sebastian, Pavement, Stephen Malkmus, Yo La Tengo, and recent major label departure Interpol. Matador said the soundtrack will be all previously released tracks that it licensed to 2K Sports for the game. There's no tracklist yet, but the list of artists on the soundtrack also includes Bear vs. Shark, Cornelius, DJ Spooky, Early Man, Green Carnation, Mogwai, Preston School of Industry, Pretty Girls Make Graves, The Double, and Fall of Troy.

MLB 2K6 is rated E for Everyone and will retail for $39.99 on the Xbox and PS2. Xbox 360, GameCube, and PSP versions of the game are scheduled to ship in late April.