LittleBigPlanet is awesome. A genuine 10/10. It is the game that could see the PlayStation 3 turn off Struggle St and begin climbing towards the summit of Next-Gen Mountain. It has the potential to, on its own, out-perform the Xbox 360’s strong Christmas line-up of Fable II, Gears of War 2 and Banjo-Kazooie and even turn Nintendo heads away from Santa’s sackful of shovelware.
How, you ask? It’s because LittleBigPlanet is the first game on the console with the potential to be this generation’s SingStar (and you could happily insert EyeToy or Buzz there as well) for Sony. To reach out to those casuals out there and say ‘hey, guess what, you can play games’ which is the very powerful statement that Nintendo made with the Wii, and Will Wright made with The Sims, to phenomenon success.
Even more importantly than that, where SingStar, Buzz and EyeToy built a bridge for non-gamers to enter the market in the last generation, LittleBigPlanet has the potential to take that same audience from their newfound ‘casual’ state through to the real deal. To be gamers. As well as bring in complete noobs and veterans alike. LittleBigplanet is the game that can open the entire PS3 software range, its Blu-ray player and its broader multimedia features by getting people through the door.
It isn’t yet, but it has the potential to be all these things simply by the nature of how it plays, what it is and the Guitar Hero-life breadth of audience to which it can appeal. In short: it could be massive!
But Sony might have fucked it all up.
Where the hell is the marketing? We cannot speak for our overseas gamers-in-arms but locally in Australia Sony has done very little to inform the consumers that it has this unbelievable product on hand and that they’ve just got to check it out. We’re talking getting serious about the game: full bus takeover ads, gameplay trailers rolling before major movies, a planned road-show taking demo stands through shopping malls across the country, slots on Good Morning Australia and A Current Affair, radio interviews – the whole shebang. Where’s the hype? The mainstream hype that goes beyond the bitching of fanboys in the arse-ends of the Net to turn a cult classic into a mainstream phenomenon. That launches Sackboy into the stratosphere.
