After sitting in on developer conference call for MLB 2K9 last Friday, my anticipation for this year’s 2K Sports baseball title wasn’t very high. The past few year we’ve heard the “going back to basics” speech, so hearing it again did not give me a lot of hope for this year’s title, even if Kush Games was out as the developer and Visual Concepts was in. Today, 2K released a demo for MLB 2K9 on the Xbox 360 (PS3 version coming on the Thursday update).

I played the demo a few times and, to my surprise, I was impressed. The game actually plays well this year, thanks to Visual Concepts. There are still quite a few things that don’t bring the game up to the level of Sony’s The Show, but it’s a huge huge step in the right direction for 2K.

The 849mb demo shouldn’t take you too long to download. If you don’t have a PS3, I can honestly say it’s not a bad move to buy the 2K baseball game this year. If you do have a PS3, I’d still go with MLB 09 The Show. We’ll have full reviews for both games in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for those.