LittleBigPlanet has sold 1.3m units Comments by Tom Bramwell

I know the article said sold, but I would still like it 100% confirmed that that figure IS sold, not shipped.

But I do wish LBP every bit of success it can generate.

"He also revealed that gamers have created around 300,000 levels since launch, and that the free PlayStation Network now has 17 million users."

Yeah Kaz, right. Hands up who has two or three accounts...

Oh, and well done LBP. Might dust it off in celebration tonight not played for ages.

From another comments thread on this site, courtesy of Dr Damn:

Gears 2 - 4.2m
CoDWaW - 4.2m (360) / 2.5m (PS3)
Fable 2 - 2.3m
Madden NFL 09 - 2m (360) / 1.4m (PS3)
LBP - 1.8m
Fallout 3 - 1.8m (360) / 1.1m (PS3)

I'm not disputing anyone's figures here, but a 500,000 units sold discrepancy is rather large, especially as the figure quoted by Sony is the lower! I guess the source for your figures, Dr Damn, needs a ridiculously unhealthy dose of salt to be taken.... ;-)

My prediction for 2009 is that LBP will stay in the charts for many months to come... Always thought it would sell modestly but consistently for a long period. After seeing the game changing MGS DLC pack I'm even more convinced that over time this game will sell extremely well over a longer period than most games. It deserves to succeed in my opinion. Well done MM and Sony for supporting such an innovative game!

I think it's safe to say that only the most nerdy ones have more than one account. And I don't think the number of families with more than one player is in the majority. So 17 million is pretty good ratio regardless.

You calling me a nerd, OnlyMe?

Bloody cheek! Anyone who owns every episode of every Star Trek (and the films!) IS NOT a nerd....I'm a geek!

As Millhouse said (geek again!) "nerds are smart"

I have 2 accounts. NERD ME UP.

@PiranhaUK

I hope you are right on that but my gut instinct is that it will be another forgotten "system seller" in 6 months and only those that have already bought it will still be plugging away at it and getting DLC.

On a similar note, anyone seen the trailer for the Tim Burton produced CGI movie 9? So reminds me of sack boy but infinitely cooler looking :)

http://www.apple.com/trailers/focus_feat...

I have 5 accounts (my main one, USA one, Japanese one, my girlfriend's one and a guest one). I'd imagine most people here have 2 or 3 at least.

some people have multiple XBL accounts too (I have 2 I think), and apparently some people just get a new one every month to play online

@bioreit
I did say the figures needed some salt in the other thread, and in fact pointed out the Sony figures in that thread last night before this article appeared. In mitigation Sony don't say when the figures they quote are up to and the source I used has a more than 400k of that number in the last 3 weeks.

One other final point, the discussion in the other thread was partly about relative success, so in that context all the figures were from the same source and therefore associated with the same bucket of salt required. :)

@bioreit
Oh and to be pwned by Kaz Hirai ... oh my god how incredibly embarrassing ;)

i still jump on to LBP, just to see what's new. it's the beauty of the game. servers however are still useless. shockingly inconsistent. i hope it sells much more the game deserves all the success it gets.

I suppose this is 'shit sales' - and that it has 'flopped' eh?

It's sold 1.3 million on the back of virtually no marketing, and it's almost certainly going to continue to sel well beyond it's release date.

Considering the heavily marketed, popular Lara Croft franchise shifted just 200k more for a cross platform game, this is absolutely brilliant.

I predict 3 million by the middle of the year.

Well not bad sales considering the userbase but not good either, wish LBP would be one of the games that really sold... One of the few that deserved it last year.

@The_Vorlon_Man
It's had lots of marketing of a sort - certainly a lot of press coverage. I don't think it's had the TV advertising spend some think though. Apparently there was cinema advertising too.

300,000 user created levels? So less than a third of the people that bought it have created something? :/

I've recently given in myself, all the creations I have in my mind, I simply cannot be arsed to actually make. The lack of precision in the platform gameplay (due to the physics) frustrates me too. I'd rather give my time to Valkyria Chronicles and Left 4 Dead at the moment, and although I do admire what LBP has aimed to do, I think I'll just absorb any genius levels through Youtube.

@ The Vorlon Man

I don't know where you live but in Copenhagen they had plastered a giant LBP poster on the main square and in cinemas there were usually two individual commercials for it during December.

'virtually no marketing'? More like blanket tv advertising, on most of the programmes I Sky+ (no live tv watching here) I could see LBP in every ad-break as I fast-forwarded through the ads in the lead up to Xmas.

>free PlayStation Network now has 17 million users

Are there even 17M PS3s?

Sony counts people who happen to have connected once to PSN using their PSP as a 'PSN User'. Although there are supposedly about that many PS3s sold and the rich people who are likely to have bought one are likely to have connected it to the internet, so it's not too outlandish.

"He also revealed that gamers have created around 300,000 levels since launch"

Most of those are doubtless complete bobbins, certainly 9 out of 10 that I've tried haven't been worth bothering with.

DrDamn:

Compared to Gears, Halo 3, Tomb Raider Underworld, Wii Music, Wii Fit, etc, it has had virtually nothing.
Gears 2 had full page spreads in mens mags, newspapers, and the like.

LBP saw very little TV advertising, virtually no billboards, and the only full page spreads in newspapers I saw was in the Londonpaper about 2 months before it was released as a front cover advertorial.

On launch there was nothing at all to say 'it's here', and no TV advertising at all in the Uk.

There may have been a spot of advertising here and there accross Europe and the US, but nothing like what you'd expect of a major release.

Where was the midnight openings? Where were the TV adverts leading up to and on release?
Where were the Sackboys wandering around shopping malls? the PS3 demo pods in shopping centres with a team of PR people? The wall to wall LBP coverage in newspapers?

Apart from the arabic song news coverage about a month before release, there has been hardly anything mentioned about it.

Then there is the quality of the advertising. Does anyone know it's actually a game too? The adverts that I have seen are very much focussed on 'Look, I made this!" - but nobody seems to know what it is that LBP is.

Sorry, but that is atrocious marketing.

Don't know about elsewhere but here in Spain LBP is sold with the PS3... That's if they're counting sales and not boxes in the supply chain.

"'virtually no marketing'? More like blanket tv advertising, on most of the programmes I Sky+ (no live tv watching here) I could see LBP in every ad-break as I fast-forwarded through the ads in the lead up to Xmas.:"

The game was released in, what, October in the US and November in the UK?

I also have Sky +, and have yet to see a single LBP advert on broadcast TV.

I've seen loads of XBOX adverts, lots of Wii adverts, and about 3 Playstation adverts.

LBP has had SOMe marketing, but you apparently have to have been there at the right moment and quite lucky to see it.

"are there even 17 million PS3s"

be gone troll.

LBP has been on sale at £16.99 or £19.99 for at least 80% of its released life

>"are there even 17 million PS3s"

>be gone troll

Rash... always good for a laugh in the morning. You made me spill my coffee.

Sad that LBP doesn't sell more... so sad for the industry and consumers :(

My GOTY by far. Having a blast designing my own levels and playing others.

@Wyrm
"300,000 user created levels? So less than a third of the people that bought it have created something? :/"

I think that will be levels which have been published. It's a misconception that the create side of things has to be something publishable or even fun for others to play to be of value. You can get a hell of a lot of fun out of just messing around in create mode - making something which is fun for you but not necessarily everyone else.

@The_Vorlon_Man
"On launch there was nothing at all to say 'it's here', and no TV advertising at all in the Uk."

Well that's possibly because on launch it wasn't ;). TV advertising anecdotally seems to be a bit regional / focused. Some say they saw loads and others - like me and you saw very little. In my experience it was as for you - nothing like the seeming blanket coverage of the Wii and 360 advertising.

@alpha-One
That's all across the world is it? Or just at Shopto.net? So you think maybe Shopto sold all of those copies?

Well I for one will be grabbing LBP just as soon as I can get a PS3. I'd reckon there's a fair few people like myself that can't get a PS3 just yet but will be doing so over the next year or so and a fair whack of them will be wanting to pick up LBP. Hey and by then it'll be £10 on Play!

i was lucky enought to receive an 160 gig PS3 over the holidays as a gift, and included was LBP

I will admit, that it is a charming little game, but at no point could i shake the feeling that this game was aimed at children.

I found it to be a solid platformer, but very very dull. i'll pick it up once in a while as a counter point, when i'm soaking in violence to the point i need to calm down, but as a gamer, i just feel i've left games like this behind

@The_vorlon_man

Actually LBP had lots of adverts towards christmas. The problem was that the adverts only served to show how goalless the levels were. You had adverts about a guy making a stage level, where you end up trying to rock your sack person out on a stage. Some guy making a level for his kids etc. etc.

The one thing that came through from it all was that the levels were only relevant to the person making them. No-one else would have got the jokes or eve cared for them. Basically LBP came across as not being a game at all.

Dizzy, as are you, my friend, as are you. ;o)

There were a load of adverts in the run up to Christmas across the multi-channel universe. Perhaps if you didn’t spot any you were watching the BBC channels…

It has also been discounted in almost all of the major (and not so major) online retailers, I picked it up for my brother for Christmas for £25, and then a week later most places had dropped it even further. It’s only really high street retailers that have kept the price up. Though obviously these discounts were more of an indicator of the UK economy going down the pan rather than LBP being a bad game.

4 accounts here, and it was one of the very first thing I did when I got my PS3. Well 3 of them anyway, the 4th for my main account when I thought of a better PSN name. Guess I'm a geek too. ^_^

"CoDWaW - 4.2m (360) / 2.5m (PS3) "

This just makes me more sad... POS game.

The problem with LBP is that it's way too difficult for the Wii public it tries to appeal to. No matter how good it looks, if gameplay frustrates newcomers even a little bit most of them will put down the controller and return to Wii Sports instead.

Personally I think it's a great game, enjoyed it very much. Haven't played it for a while (been addicted to MLB The Show again the past few weeks and before that on R2 online multiplayer) but am curious to see what kind of user generated content is up by now.

Good point, Les... but most consumers never bought the game in the first place.

"The one thing that came through from it all was that the levels were only relevant to the person making them. No-one else would have got the jokes or eve cared for them. Basically LBP came across as not being a game at all."

My wife's comment was "But the adverts I saw made it look rubbish, what youre playing is MUCH better!'..

It's a real shame.

Sony need to hire the Wii advertising guys and get some blanket wall to wall coverage and sponsorship.

I suspect LBP will be sold mainly through word of mouth.

And just how many of these '300,000' levels are RRoD / MGS jokes I wonder?

"The problem with LBP is that it's way too difficult for the Wii public it tries to appeal to. No matter how good it looks, if gameplay frustrates newcomers even a little bit most of them will put down the controller and return to Wii Sports instead. "

How many 'Wii' customers have you met?

It may not be as pick up and play as Wii Music or Wii Fit, but then few games are.

The game is not nearly as 'frustrating and difficult' as some would suggest, nor is it as 'hardcore only'.

"Good point, Les... but most consumers never bought the game in the first place."

Might have been a bit different if their first experience with it at a PS3 owning friend's place had been better... Positive hands-on experiences have been a huge contributor to Wii's success.

"The game is not nearly as 'frustrating and difficult' as some would suggest"

It bloody well is. I entirely agree with Les - it's too difficult for the type of market it would otherwise appeal to.

I gave up at a big rotating wheel in the Bunker level - it's stupidly hard and very frustrating due to the jumping physics. My missus and son (who both adore the TT Lego games) didn't even get beyond the Wild West levels. I also know 3 other guys who packed it in mid-game too due to the difficulty.

"How many 'Wii' customers have you met?

It may not be as pick up and play as Wii Music or Wii Fit, but then few games are.

The game is not nearly as 'frustrating and difficult' as some would suggest, nor is it as 'hardcore only'."

I've shown, and played, the game with quite some friends and familiy members. They all love the aesthetics but the ones that already played single player games liked the gameplay while the people that basically started gaming with the Wii found it too cumbersome to bother with it for long. When people come over they ask to play Buzz or Wii Sports again but not LBP. Of course it's just anecdotal evidence and no scientific proof. But I just don't buy it that the only reason that LBP is not a huge success is lack of marketing effort. It just doesn't appeal to a broad enough (or specific enough) public.

@Les: That doesn't make sense. You argument suggest that Wii sold pooly (or just less than great) at day one, which it didn't - it sold through from day one.
Of course there a chance that a LBP buzz will rise when/if more people get a chance to actually try it out (it's still a fairly new game) especielly if Sony market is more/better, but I doubt it at this point. I blame Sony's marketing and not the difficulty.

EDIT: My post was a reply to your previous post :)

I have somewhere in the region of 20 serious game playing friends who have played LBP. Only 1 out of all those people think LBP is playable. Only 1.

With that kind of negative hands-on reaction I can't see word of mouth benefitting LBP at all.

It is a design tool which somehow manages to sell despite the game attached to it.

@farticusmaximus: Claiming 19 out of 20 gamers think that LBP is unplayable is ridiculous. Maybe 19 out of 20 xbots.

@Beano

I know 3 PS3 owners in total, about 10 360 owners and all but 1 own a Wii.

I get the feeling LBP is an internet-only phenomenon, because It just isnt popular with my real life gaming friends.