Alex Evans: It's an interesting question. A couple of things spring to mind - we laboured a long time recently over the free demo we'll be releasing shortly, and one of the reasons we didn't release it beforehand was the question of how do you capture its essence, as you say?
Q: From a consumer's point of view, if digital distribution cuts out retail costs there's an expectation that some savings are passed on to the consumer - although publishers seem to go pretty quiet on that point when asked.
Alex Evans: Well, that's the thing - and this isn't me fobbing you off - but Sony sets the price point on the online side of things, so I don't know what that's going to be. But I do know that I really want us to see different online routes into LBP.
That's no great news, but what I think is cool is that LBP can afford to experiment a bit more - for example, we're getting on for 2 million levels that have been published now. If you look at online distribution for LBP, when the sequel comes along, what do we do with all that content? I think we can give consumers lots of stuff that you couldn't in a traditional game. We can give them backwards compatibility with those levels, and then when you decide on how you're going to sell that to them... all I'm saying is that we've got loads of options open to us, and we can pick really late. We can make them in a year's time, or whenever we want to ship - and that's really useful for a developer, you can make a fine grain decision about what the price point is, or how you dice it.
Sony might have a standard price for a triple-A game on PSN, for example, but we've got extra options that they don't have. We could do a version with every level available on subscription, or something like that. I don't know what we'll do, but it's really exciting that we can make those choices, and make them late in the day.
Q: You're suggesting there that we'll see LBP 2 at some point?
Alex Evans: Well, I'd love there to be a sequel, put it that way. But that's not an announcement - although I will say that the entire team is working on LBP.
Q: You've already got 2 million levels that people have created, so maybe that's the answer to this question - but would you like to see even more accessible tools for people in the game?
Alex Evans: Yeah, I would have liked to have made it better. We originally started with a shotgun and a hair dryer, and it mutated a lot... One of the things we're focusing on next is looking at stuff that insane - generally French and Japanese - people have built, and then making that more accessible, just making some of the ideas that are possible, easier.
The second side of it is that at the moment you can exchange objects via PSN messages. One of the original ideas that was axed from the original game was that you could publish objects from the game online, not just levels, and you'd be credited with the use of those objects.
I think something like that will really boost it - if you're just a beginner user, you can go and browse not just for levels, but for cars, let's say. Take that, sticker it up, and you're done - and that will change the barriers to entry.
So both of those things - changing the tools themselves, and changing how you share - are coming.
They could create a tool that automatically places blocks with musical notes attached. Create the music in a more familiar music editor and then the game does the hard work for you.
Not everyone wants to visually show the music playing so the same editor could just output the music as BGM.
I guess my wording was poor, I just meant that I don't know if releasing a demo close to a year after release will have any impact on the game's sales. The game sold well and I'm 99.9% sure it has turned a profit.
They could create a tool that automatically places blocks with musical notes attached. Create the music in a more familiar music editor and then the game does the hard work for you.
Not everyone wants to visually show the music playing so the same editor could just output the music as BGM.
MCV reports that a LittleBigPlanet "Game of the Year" edition will release for the PlayStation 3 later this year. The new version will allegedly feature much of the game's (large wealth of) DLC previously released over the PlayStation Network.
This information is currently being reported by a UK site, so this may be Europe only -- which has been known to happen with situations involving big DLC bundles. We're currently checking with Sony America to see if the GOTY edition is expected to arrive in the land of the buffalo.
MCV reports that a LittleBigPlanet "Game of the Year" edition will release for the PlayStation 3 later this year. The new version will allegedly feature much of the game's (large wealth of) DLC previously released over the PlayStation Network.
This information is currently being reported by a UK site, so this may be Europe only -- which has been known to happen with situations involving big DLC bundles. We're currently checking with Sony America to see if the GOTY edition is expected to arrive in the land of the buffalo.
Looks Like I'll actually benefit from coming late to the party
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