The LittleBigMap collates together LBP discussions and content from across the web, and plots some of the latest and best videos, pics and tweets on a handy and familiar map interface. So, at a glance you can see that thousands of people are contributing to the LBP community from all over the world – and then you can zoom in, navigate around and take a look at some of the content they’re sharing. There are some nice photos in Hawaii, for starters. :)

The extra cool thing is – the LittleBigMap notices when LBP.me URLs are included in video descriptions, screenshots and tweets, and automatically pulls in stats and information about that level. It’s another way of discovering the most fun and creative levels that people are talking about around the world, and it’ll grow as more of you start to make use of LBP.me URLs around the web. So check it out!

Find out more

Good news everyone! We are finally here: launch week. By the end of this week, nearly all of you should have your copies of LittleBigPlanet nestled safely inside your PS3, and you’ll be able to join Sackboy in saving the Cosmos from a horrible, and most inconvenient fate.

Reviews have been popping into existence all over the internet recently too, a really positive response, check out some of the wonderful things people have been saying…

“With this sequel, Media Molecule gives players a bottomless toybox, and I can’t remember the last time a game had such a relentless grip on my imagination.”

“LBP2 represents a dazzling new opportunity for creating deep, diverse and ingenious play”

“This isn’t just a superbly presented game that incorporates multiple genres and comes packaged with a powerful creation suite, it’s your doorway into a wonderfully charming, vibrant, and ever-changing universe where almost anything is possible. “

“We can’t wait to see what LittleBigPlanet 2 has evolved into in a month or three, when we can truly measure the impact that these tools will have had on an already ultra-creative community. We predict that it’s going to be like setting off an atomic bomb. LittleBigPlanet 2 will see an explosion of hobbyist game creation that could – in an even bigger way this time – send shockwaves around the industry. Duck and cover people, Sackboy is back. And in a world obsessed with identikit sequels, that is something worth believing in.”

When will you be able to grab a copy of LittleBigPlanet 2 from a store?

• Tuesday 18th January – Americas & Korea
• Wednesday 19th January – Mainland Europe
• Thursday 20th January – Australia and New Zealand
• Friday 21st January – UK and Ireland
• Thursday 10th February – Japan

With it being launch week, you’ll also find some special DLC items on the store. Available this week only on the store for LBP2 players will be the LittleBigPlanet 2 Week 1 shirt. To celebrate the launch of another LittleBigPlanet game, the much coveted Spacesuit Launch Costume will also be available again for one week only!

Find out more

After some furious voting, the winners of the LittleBigPlanet Contraption Challenge 12 have been selected, and some very special prizes have been awarded

Without further ado, we present the winners of the Contraption Challenge 12, in which creators were challenged to build a Sackboy Exterminator…

Winner! Strangepom – New Zealand
2nd Place: PPp_Killer – Australia
3rd Place: DragonFly2500 – Germany
Joint 5th Place: Morning-nya – UK
Joint 5th Place: fluxlasers – UK

Congratulations Strangepom, who walks away with a 46” Bravia TV, a copy of LBP PSP and a Crown, and of course to the runners up who each win themselves a copy of LBP PSP! Check out the video below of all the finalists, and stay tuned for more information on new contraption challenges for LittleBigPlanet 2 in the new year!

Find out more

We are very proud to present to you, LBP.me, the LittleBigPlanet community portal, where every creator and every level has their own page on the web!

If you already play LittleBigPlanet you can sign in right now and see your own page. You’ll want to change your privacy settings though (see below).

Once logged in you’ll see your recent activity feed, showing all the things your friends and hearted creators have been up to. You’ll also find whole load of features to play with that will help you discover loads of new levels and games, as you browse through millions of creations, adding the interesting ones to your in-game queue as you go.

Play around with the settings and filters and customise your feed and pages to be just how you want them. You can even use our widget wizard to build yourself a customised widget for your blog or forum signature, etc. Have a look around!

Privacy settings

Because LBP.me takes data straight from the game and puts it on the web, we’ve added some privacy settings so you can control what information is shared.

We’ve defaulted this to be in the super strength maximum security mode, and so to see anything cool on the web, you will need to change your preferences. You can do this in-game or straight from the web! Check out this FAQ item for more information.

Please Share!

LittleBigPlanet is about Playing, Creating and Sharing, and even though we have defaulted all the privacy settings to off, we’d really love everyone to open up their levels and profiles to the world, it will really help the community to grow, and be a huge benefit!

Thanks for listening, pop back again soon, as we’ll be updating the site over coming weeks to incorporate more LittleBigPlanet 2 information and fun things to look at, for now though, now go and check out LBP.me!

Find out more

A message from AceCreator and the guys from Cambridge Studio on the anniversary of LittleBigPlanet PSP! Happy Birthday!

So, where are we a year after the game’s release? Well, the Community Moon now contains over 130,000 community levels, with well over 1,500 published every week, some of which are of truly exceptional quality.

The LBP PSP community is thriving, with strong communication and support between creators; we’re on our seventh community competition, with creators running each one very professionally, as well as coming up with cool ideas for themes; and collaborations like the mighty ‘Kindred’ and the ’12 Days of Christmas’ have taken us by surprise with their remarkable dedication and organisation. A community this passionate is something very special indeed, and the SCE Cambridge Studio greatly appreciates all the amazing talent and energy that the community creators have put in over the last twelve months. The following creators in particular deserve recognition for their substantial involvement and hard work, please put your hands together for:

• ali985/AlisMuffin
• amazingflyingpoo
• Arrestor/Maboe84
• b-coli
• BlueBulletBill
• Captain-Rule
• Cheeze-Bo
• Coxy224
• CyberSora
• Domick12
• famouscustard
• Fastbro
• fodawim
• jeffcu28
• jysgdvc
• Lleonard
• MattAstr
• minimmo1986
• NightAngel321
• Salieri/SalieriAAX
• Spark151
• Taffey/tsr13
• The-Questor
• VelcroJonze

Well done, you’ve made the community an even more wonderful place. The last year for LBP PSP has been a year to be proud of, with imaginative, funny, and cleverly constructed levels. We look forward to seeing what the community will produce over the next year!

Happy creating,

AceCreator.

Find out more

Announced today! A brand new spin-off PSN title that gives a taste of the fun that can happen when Sackboy gets his hands on the PlayStation Move motion controller.

Sackboy’s Prehistoric Moves contains a brand new 10 level theme – a dinosaur dominated land where the Evil Big Rex is king. You are on a mission to take on challenges engineered by Terrance Dactyl – and you’re going to need help. So put on your bear skins and grab up to four mates to navigate the tricky terrain of tropical jungle and erupting volcanoes – the player with the PlayStation Move controller leads the way, flicking switches and triggering platforms to help the others, using DualShock Controllers, through each level. Leap between Dino heads, use the Move controller to blast aside crates of bubbles, ride dinosaurs through prehistoric cities and take to the heights of the prehistoric tree canopy – then team up to defeat Big Rex, all whilst collecting Trophies along the way.

Sackboy’s Prehistoric Moves is completely standalone – it doesn’t require either LBP 1 or LBP 2 to run. What you will need is one PlayStation Move controller, and at least one friend with a DualShock Controller – it is a Move Required and multiplayer-only co-op experience.

The game will be included on the LittleBigPlanet 2 disc when it is released in January. But for everyone who’s desperate to have some motion controlled fun with Sackboy before then – and for the new PS3 and Move owners out there who are intrigued to find out who this Sackboy fellow is – Sackboy’s Prehistoric Moves will be released on PlayStation Store on 15th December, priced €5.99.

That’s not all though! A week earlier, on 8th December, all PlayStation Plus subscribers will be able to download Sackboy’s Prehistoric Moves for free! And, as an extra “thank you” to the amazing community, thousands more LittleBigPlanet fans will receive an email to download Sackboy’s Prehistoric Moves for free at the same time. Listen out for more news on this nearer the time.

For all you Move fans, Sackboy’s Prehistoric Moves is great fun – but it only scratches the surface of what’s possible when PlayStation Move and LittleBigPlanet meet, so look out for some exciting further updates to come after the release of LittleBigPlanet 2…

Find out more

One of the things we promised when we announced the change in LittleBigPlanet 2’s release date was that we’d find some ways to give you some LittleBigPlanet goodness ahead of the new game’s release in January. Now’s the time to share with you what we’ve got in store…

LittleBigPlanet 2 Story Mode Demo

Let’s start with the great news that there will be a LittleBigPlanet 2 PSN demo coming your way next month! This demo will let EVERYONE out there get a taste of LittleBigPlanet 2’s new Story Mode levels, and some of the new gameplay types that LBP 2 will give you the power to create for yourself. Experience the swinging good fun of the Grapple Hook, rescue some helplessly adorable Sackbots, and see the chaotic multiplayer fun that blows up when competitive scoring mode and some Creatinators armed with rockets are combined!

LittleBigPlanet 2 Story Mode demo will be published on PlayStation Store on 22nd December.

LittleBigPlanet 2 Beta Trial

For weeks now, a group of trialists have been exploring the LittleBigPlanet 2 closed beta trial – providing the team at Media Molecule with a huge amount of valuable feedback, whilst also using the new tools to create some frankly stunning new levels that I’m sure many of you have been admiring from afar. There’s no better demonstration of just how powerful LBP 2’s new features are than to look at these creations – and I know many of you would love to play around with the new tools for yourselves.

Whilst everyone works hard to get all aspects of LBP 2 ready to release in January, it’s unfortunately not possible to open up the beta trial to everyone who’d like to be on there – the huge flood of Creators would be overwhelming! But the great news is that we are able to expand the beta trial a little further – so in early December, a new batch of PlayStation Plus subscribers will receive invitations to join the beta trial. Look out for more info to follow, Plus-folk!

So, to summarise all of that awesomeness…

• Early December – A new batch of PlayStation Plus subscribers are invited into the LittleBigPlanet 2 beta trial
• 22nd December – Everyone get their hands on the LittleBigPlanet 2 demo

Find out more

Aside from the special case, the Collector’s Edition also contains some exclusive special content…

CE Core contents

The Core contents of the Collector’s Edition is as follows:

• 5 PSN Avatars
• 7 Sackboy Costumes
  • Disney / Pixar’s Toy Story 3’s “Alien” Costume
  • Disney’s TRON: Legacy “Clu” Costume
  • The Muppets’ “The Great Gonzo” Costume
  • Even More Animals’ “Crocodile” Costume
  • Even More Animals’ “Vulture” Costume
  • Even More Animals’ “Cobra” Costume
  • Even More Animals’ “Mandrill” Costume

On top of all of these ‘core’ contents, in many countries there will also be additional or expanded bundles available that include some cool real-world LittleBigPlanet items.

Pre-Order Bonuses

In addition to those costumes, you could get your hands on some other exclusive costumes sets; PlayStation heroes Jak & Daxter, and Ratchet & Clank, which will be available chiefly through pre-order schemes.

The pre-order items and real world items that come with the Collector’s Edition will be available in different ways throughout Europe and the PAL territories, so keep your eyes peeled for more announcements soon!

Find out more

What kind of things? Small things, big things and even Sack-things. That’s right – you can carry Sackbots and other Sackboys!

Find out more

Our 12th, and final, LittleBigPlanet Contraption Challenge has arrived over at the Official EU PlayStation Community. To celebrate a whole two years of contraption creating madness, we’re offering you the chance to win a 42” BRAVIA TV!

As the contraption challenges always result in utterly mad, sometimes outright bonkers creations being let loose on LittleBigPlanet; we figured that our final challenge deserves a suitably chaotic theme… In CC12 – you’ll need to create a Sackboy Exterminator.

Your Exterminator could be anything! From a machine that chases Sackboy and destroys everything in its path, to an evil spaghetti-monster with multiple attack phases. Think of it as a boss or an enemy but without the need for Sackboy to fight back. The crazier and more original your idea, the better – but it should certainly inspire Sackboy to run like his little life depends on it.

To take part in our challenge, just troop on over to the Official PlayStation EU Community forums. There, you can find all the instructions you need to enter the competition. The challenge is open now, so get to it!

Oh, and Big news for Irish entrants! Courtesy of SCE Ireland, the top ten Irish entrants into LBP CC12 will be invited to join a separate competition in which you’ll create an Irish themed level. You’ll be invited to a live event in Ireland with PlayStation and Media Molecule, where your Irish level will be judged by the Media Molecule team. With a whole host of other goodies on offer at the live event and a chance to meet the team behind LittleBigPlanet, you really don’t want to miss this one.

Finally, don’t shed a tear – the LBP Contraption Challenges will be back again in LittleBigPlanet 2. Keep an eye on our forums for news!

You can also follow the LBP Contraption Challenges on twitter , youtube and even iTunes.

Good luck!

Find out more

Hello folks, greetings from Media Molecule! We’ve been celebrating the second anniversary of LittleBigPlanet this week and last, by eating lots of cake and drinking champagne (in between working really hard to finish LBP2 of course.)

As a special birthday treat we’ve put together this article looking at the genesis of Sackboy, talking to our artists Kareem and Francis, and asking them how he grew from some randomly coloured programmer art into the little guy we all know and love today.

“He had a lot of personality, even then” reflects Kareem, as he, Francis and I glance at some concept artwork and look back to the early days of the now iconic character’s origins.

“I think it was the cheekiness. Dave always does that, pays attention to personality and very subtle things. When YellowHead was pulling the big old rock, the character looked like he was straining, even though there was no supporting animation… his little debug arms stretching as he pulled.”

YellowHead was very much placeholder programmer art created by Dave for the first playable CraftWorld code which was taken up to Sony on that fateful day of the pitch. But although he was merely a stand in, he ended up dictating the proportions of Sackboy, and the things he would need to be able to do.

After the team got the go ahead to develop the game, the character needed to evolve into a proper character to fit the game’s developing art style, and so Mark, Francis and Kareem all went to the drawing board and started to concept. For quite some time the character was still called YellowHead and indeed kept the yellow head after which he was named.

Head to the Mm Blog to read the full article, complete with lots of unseen concept art, and footage of some unused Sackboy death animations.

Find out more

Last Friday the PlayStation blog posted a video that gave you a sneak-peak at the power and potential of Sackbots in LittleBigPlanet 2. And now, whilst you’re still reeling from the awesomeness of that, here’s another featurette for you – this time we’re showing off (adopts deep dramatic voice) The Creatinator.

The Creatinator is a handy new power-up that lets you launch all kinds of useful objects – from water to fight fires to supercharged rockets. And that’s just for starters – once you start tinkering in Create mode, the possibilities really open up. Just imagine a gadget that lets you launch streams of giant flaming cows to demolish walls – I’m sure that’s something lots of you have been waiting to see for a long time…

Find out more

Overnight we swiftly swapped the entire server for a new one, a new super-fast server that allows us to have a lot more control over the world, and also brings a few new features to LittleBigPlanet.

They are now back online, and once you log in, you may notice a few things have changed…

Cool Levels

Cool Levels and Highest Rated now work slightly differently, and also need a little bit of time to settle down, so may look weird for a few days. The new servers allow us to tweak the way that Cool Levels works much faster than before, so we may play around with it a bit to get it working just the way we want it!

MmPicks

If you look under the new MmPicks Search category, you’ll find a selection of our favourite levels. The current selection has been taken from the Media Molecule blog, and we will be adding to it over time. Enjoy!

Play Queues

Queues are now active in LittleBigPlanet! When you find a cool level you think you might want to play later, you can just hit the square button, and then choose to add it to your Queue. Your Queue can be found in Searches > My Searches.
This will be an even more useful feature once we launch LBP.me, as you’ll be able to add levels to your queue from the web!

Al these changes and more secret and hidden things pave the way for both LBP.me and LittleBigPlanet 2, exciting!

Find out more

Hi Sackfolk, at around 08:00am BST on the 27th of October we will be taking the LittleBigPlanet servers offline for approximately 24 hours.

In this time we will be fixing the servers up with lots of new technology to make them ready for both LittleBigPlanet 2, and the features that will be available on LBP.me.

During this time, you will be unable to access any of the Community levels, or play online.

When the servers come online again, you may notice one or two small differences, but most things should remain largely the same and the fun shall resume!

Sorry about that, hopefully it won’t be too inconvenient for you all.

Mm

Find out more

There’s also some tasty information about a new setting that will allow people to tweak Sackboy’s jump to be just how they want it in their levels…. enjoy!

Find out more

The LittleBigPlanet Central Spotlight crew have been at it again, this time directing their level loving eyes towards the PSP, and one of the stars of that Community; Jeffcu28.

Jeffcu28

Art can take many forms. It can be a beautiful painting, a thought-provoking sculpture, or a moving composition of music. It’s not often one thinks of video games when the word “art” is brought up, even less so when it comes to handheld games. Enter Jeffcu28: Calm, collected, well-spoken, and absolutely determined to change the world’s mind about what form an artist’s canvas might take.

Since the release of LittleBigPlanet PSP in November 2009, Jeffcu28 has treated us to some of the most incredible and varied levels we could possibly imagine. We’ve bounded across giant flowers, watched a level being painted right before our little button eyes, and experienced the vengeful sadness of a love story gone terribly wrong. And then there’s that other level he made… but I can’t quite remember at the moment what it was all about. No matter, I’m sure it was epic. Let’s go ask Jeffcu28 to tell us all about it.

Read the huge interview with Jeffcu28 over on LittleBigPlanet Central, and enjoy the video below of his Creator Rewind, taking a look at some of the levels behind the name, and how they’ve been put together!

Find out more

Find out more

Whilst a lot of us might have eyes firmly focused on LittleBigPlanet 2, The LittleBigPlanet PSP community has been hard at work building some really interesting and fun looking levels, and generally having a lot of fun.

Kindred is a highly teased community project from a big gang of excellent PSP Creators, who used LittleBigPlanet Central as a staging ground for their ARG-like teasers. Working with QR codes, secret messages, beautifully crafted artwork, and various puzzles, the team behind this level pack confused and excited the PSP community for several weeks before finally revealing more about the project.

AceCreator, the official Sack Spokesperson for LBP PSP delivered this message about kindred he wished to pass along to you all…

We can honestly say that we didn’t see this coming; ‘a collaborative project that introduces a brand new story level series to the PSP community.’ Fantastic!

Well, a project of this kind of scope and ambition deserves recognition, and is to be applauded. The very professional publicity image had already caught our eye here at Cambridge (nice work, dajdaj03), so we were intrigued, along with everyone else.

That’s quite a team you guys have assembled there: amazingflyingpoo, Arrestor/Maboe84, BlueBulletBill, CyberSora, Domick12, Fastbro, jeffcu28, Lleonard Pler/Lleonard, salieri/SalieriAAX, Spark15, Taffey/tsr13, VelcroJonze. We’ve come to know your talent and individual styles through all the community competitions, and some of you have already received Sackies from us for your hard work.

This level of teamwork and ambition has seriously impressed us, and we’re confident you’ll live up to the hype, given the credentials of your team. The prologue level is a very cool teaser: simple, but atmospheric, and it definitely does the job, because now we want to play the levels!

I and the rest of the LBP PSP team look forward with great interest to what ‘Kindred’ will deliver.

Regards,

AceCreator.

Read more about the project on LBPC, and check out the awesome teaser trailer below!

Find out more

Come and join us for our final fan meet of the year!

We are going to be at the Eurogamer Expo in London again this year, every single day, with the Saturday being the best day of all.

No matter which day you can make it you’ll be able to play LittleBigPlanet 2, meet some of the Molecules, and some of the coolest creators from the the community and other likeminded LittleBigPlanet fans!

But on the Saturday, there will be more of them, and Danny and John(ee) will be taking to the stage in the afternoon to do some live creating and things.
Last year we had a blast, and this year should be even more blastworthy, after all we didnt have a new game to show you then did we? :)

If you are planning to come to the LBPUKFM2010 please RSVP by emailing hello@mediamolecule.com with the subject EG Expo 2010 RSVP, so we can email you with more details. Remember to tell us what day(s) you will be around.

Find out more

LittleBigPlanet 2 is a crazy dream, a dream to allow players to make whatever kind of game they want, but also to play though a great adventure of drama and excitement, power-ups, and cinematics. But like all of the most ambitious ideas, it can be a considerable challenge to turn these dreams in to fun games. We’ve all been working like powered-up space ninjas and we’re almost there, but because we love what we’ve made, and we love our little sack-friends, and most of all we love all our fans out there, we couldn’t let you all get together until we knew we were giving you the best experience imaginable. Which is why we’ve taken the hard decision to delay the worldwide release of LittleBigPlanet 2, originally slated for later this year to January 2011.

We know this will come as disappointing news for all you LittleBigPlanet fans, and believe us, we are disappointed too. We are a tight-knit team and we take enormous pride in our work, so to raise the bar we’ve set with the original LittleBigPlanet, a game that has been so embraced by all, we’ve agreed to allow ourselves a bit more time to deliver the experience that our great fans and community deserve. We are truly sorry, but hope you understand that we have to build the best possible game, as it is the foundation of our community.

On the upside, we are going to find a way to give more of you a taste of LBP2 prior to launch, so stay tuned.

Thanks for your continued love and support, it won’t be long – we promise.

Lots of love from all at Mm

Find out more