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Take-Two has released "preliminary" earnings results for its fourth quarter and fiscal year (ending October 31, 2009), blaming a $.09 a share slump on poor sales of its Major League Baseball games. It seems the publisher might have been misled by the commonly held misconception that baseball is the "national pastime" -- modern warfare has clearly seized that honor. Take-Two didn't specify which MLB titles might have underperformed, but it released The BIGS 2, MLB Front Office Manager, MLB 2K9, and MLB 2K9 Fantasy All-Stars all in 2009, and all to mediocre critical reception.

2K expects to take a $30–35 million loss on its MLB business and further adjusted its financial outlook downward following the BioShock 2 delay. While Borderlands and NBA 2K10 helped generate some revenue last quarter, Take-Two's future doesn't look to be paved in gold. "Looking ahead, we remain committed to our goal of operating profitably on a non-GAAP basis;" CEO Strauss Zelnick said. "However, we do not currently expect to achieve that goal in fiscal 2010. We have an outstanding product portfolio, exceptional creative talent and a solid balance sheet, and are confident that these strengths will provide a sound foundation for improved performance."

At first, we doubted MLB 09's simulation of the World Series between the NY Yankees and the Philadelphia ... Phillies (a bit redundant, no?). However, the Phillies' dominant performance in Game 1 of the series made us reconsider our position.

According to the San Diego Studio-developed baseball game, the World Series will last all seven games this year, with Philadelphia ultimately the victor. So far, MLB has correctly predicted the victor of Game 1.

This may be upsetting to New York fans, especially as the Yankees are the heavily favored team in this match-up. However, video game AI has had a pretty successful track record so far. Look at Madden, which has managed to correctly predict the winner of 6 out of the last 7 Super Bowl games. We'll find out soon enough if MLB has the same accuracy.

Hardware numbers were down in March 2009's NPD figures. Yet, Sony has something to smile about. PS3 was able to secure three of the top 10 software sales in March with Resident Evil 5, Killzone 2 and MLB 09 The Show.

MLB 09 The Show is Sony's exclusive first-party baseball title and it sold an impressive 305,000 units on PS3 alone, making it the best-selling sports game of the month. As the #6 selling game of the month, The Show franchise has grown significantly. Patrick Seybold of SCEA told us that "MLB'09 The Show saw an increase of more than 45% growth from its 2008 version in North America."

With Killzone 2 selling over a million copies worldwide, Sony can at least tout their growing software sales. See Seybold's full statement after the break.

Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia is the cover athlete for this year's PlayStation-exclusive baseball series, MLB The Show. In addition to posing for the cover of the upcoming games, Pedroia donned a motion capture suit to help create a realistic look and feel for the game.

You can see him striking a pose, donning a glove, and wielding his bat in our gallery below. MLB 09 The Show arrives on every PlayStation system (PS2, PSP, PS3) next week.