The struggles of selling an original IP -- Sony talks LBP sales

by Andrew Yoon on Nov 19th 2008 11:44AM

Gears of War 2 - 2.13 million units
Fallout 3 - 1.23 million units
Guitar Hero: World Tour - 1.19 million units
LittleBigPlanet - 0.75 million units

There have been a lot of heavy hitters this season, and for PS3 owners, LittleBigPlanet was easily the biggest game of the year. Critics have heaped tons of praise for Media Molecule's innovative platformer, but how has it performed at retail?

"This is an incredibly volatile time of year and the chart reflects that," Sony's David Wilson told GI.biz. The charts have been an uphill battle for LBP, which has been struggling against the return of massive franchises. But, in spite of being an original IP on the PS3, the game has done relatively well. "LittleBigPlanet has also sold well given that this is a brand new IP ... Our industry is littered with examples of brand new innovative titles that have been lauded by the critics but have sold dismally," Wilson added. "But Sony is delighted and honored to be working with hugely talented developers who can create brilliantly creative original games."

It's unlikely LBP will be able to beat any of the other games on this list. However, Sony is still optimistic that sales will continue to rise higher due to "word of mouth."

Source

Tags: littlebigplanet, sales

Reader Comments (78)

that was the numbers from last month right??? so thats just like what......pre-orders and 2 or 3 days of sales???

THis game will have legs. also its the only game on that list that really isn't violent or is marketed to teens, i say thats an accomplishment. This is an amazing game, i recommend it to everyone.

Considering that Gears 2 didn't come out until November 4th no, those numbers aren't just from Oct 28th - Nov 1st.

People seem to kinda forget LBP hasn't actually been out that long. And 0.75 isn't THAT bad, its going to easily sell a million by the end of the year. Which for a new I.P isn't too shabby. Gotta remember its the holiday season and people will put off buying games until xmas when they can be bought as presents for people. I know thats the case for me anyway.

Also has anyone in Europe noticed that LBP is 70 Euro?!

You can buy LBP on Play.com for €42.

Well, not only is LBP an original, new IP, but it's also not another gray and brown shooter, which doesn't help it's being accepted by the masses.

Hey, PSFanboy never sent my confirmation email for this comment put posted it anyway???!

Now I look like a dirty spammer!

LBP may be an original IP, but I think what's really holding it back is that it's not another gray and brown shooter.

Sadly thats probably true to some extent. The majority of gamers seem to have pretty conservative tastes in games hence the success of done to death franchises.

Yeah, I can't WAIT for Killzone 2.

That's the disgusting truth. Thing is, I've had more fun creating and playing with LBP than any shooter of the last 2-3 years.

GOD DAMMIT PEOPLE! GET ON THE BUS!

People in the UK have no excuse not to own it already.

LBP is £29.99 on Play.com and £28.99 at Argos, and if you spend £50 at Argos they'll give you a £5 voucher. So buy two copies!

"word of mouth" = Bad MM support, servers down like 3 times a week, free world with copyright, users poor designed levels (only 5 levels are good but not great).. does thinks make people think about buying this game.

Again, it's a new IP. These things are going to happen and having played the game two nights ago I can safely say that I didn't have any connection problems and I feel that it's not fair to judge a game based on user's "bad" levels when the game itself is stupendous. Actually, in regards to that, I have played many levels that I considered 5 stars (I only played about 6 user levels so far since my g/f and I are still trying to obtain all 100%'s in all of the developer levels)....

LBP's charm, innovativeness and casual appeal make this an easy referral to friends.....

Im not the only one with does problems. Check the past LBP posts and you will find people complaining about it.

I know its a new IP but thats not an excuse for poor sales. What about Uncharted, Heavenly Sword (even if the game was short it sold well). Going to other consoles you have the first halo, gears of wars,etc.

Good Sales = people who find this game worth buy.

Alright man. Your experience/opinion of the game is different than mine. I think those issues have been resolved for the most part. Server issues haven't been an issue since the latest update (for me), copyright issues will be addressed fairly (you will be assisted on what needs to be changed) and as for the "low" sales, wait until after Xmas to start talking....time will tell...considering the game's only been out for a couple weeks, it's a new IP, other great mass-appeal/FPS titles are out atm, it makes sense that sales haven't been as amazing as originally expected.....word of mouth will play a big role in it's sales from now on I would guess....

The whole "user levels are shit" thing is pure bs. Just because most of you simply play the same popular levels doesn't mean that every other sucks. The best levels I have played were user generated and had less than 100 play-throughs. You just gotta look around for quality instead of popularity.

how is LBP having poor sales? .75million copies in a two weeks? lets take your other examples: Heavenly Sword did 106k its first week, it took more then 10 weeks to get to the .5million mark.
Uncharted did 136k its first week and took 5 weeks to get to .75million. LBP has blown these numbers away.

onto the other console and why halo and gears did so well. I remember when halo first appeared on the game scene.. Bungie was developing it for the PC and everyone was amazed by the graphics at the time.. then they were sold off to MS. Three years later the finished product arrived.. so there was hype for halo, one as a new shooter in a land of not that many shooters, and two as a ip the gaming community had been curious about for three years. Gears had the power of epic games behind it. this from the company that gave us Unreal Tournament, one of the best PC fps games ever.

while yes both halo and gears were "new" ips they were from established companies with great game records. LBP is Media Molecules first foray into the gaming market. for a new company to sell .75million copies of a new ip in two weeks is great. just like the game itself.

The problem is that it's not easy enough to find good levels on LBP.

I'm sure there are quite a few but the levels on the "Cool Levels" globe never change despite some of those levels being quite bad.

I have played a few really good levels but I had to find them using my PC. That's just stupid. MM said that they were going to make it easy to find good new levels and it's actually quite hard.

You're either an X-troll or an idiot.

Support has been awesome, there are PLENTY of incredible user levels out there, and any server issues they have had are the norm - remember GTA IV's launch, or Warhawk, or COD4, etc.

If this doesn't continue to sell to the point of being one of the all-time bestsellers, it will further underscore the sad reality that the majority of gaming consumers are absolute imbeciles.

And I know they are - it's just that you'd hope people would see something this wonderful for what it is, instead of slack-jawing it to the counter and plunking down $60 for shoot-me-please-IV.

There aren't enough advertising for LBP to the mainstream audience.

Not only that but I think people are still confused about what it is exactly (not around here). I think that the confusion puts consumers off.

I agree. I know what it is, but I don't know if I will like it so much to own one copy. A DEMO would be great...

Because the game can't be summarized in a 30-second advertisement Sony needs to put a demo out there for any PS3 owner to get....especially for the ones such as Rodz who may know what it is, but don't want to spend $60 to "try it out".....Hopefully they don't go the route Konami did with MGS4 and its demo....

I still have a hard time explaining what the game is to other male-gamers. And they TOTALLY haven't advertised enough. Also to blame IMO is the mediocre and somewhat confusing boxart... that's what the majority of people walkin' through Wal-Mart are looking at.

PSN:Wolflogic Level: Care-verfield -Heart it!

There was never any real TV marketing for this game, we've should have seen Sackboy on our TV's way back in the SUMMERTIME! and should be seeing him NOW also, SONY let me market your products.

How many games have actually sold 750,000 thousand all year?

Let alone in a week or so..

I do NOT understand the point of all this..

They would've sold more if they hadn't completely botched the whole thign with censorship.

The only people who know about that are people who have already purchased the game and sheep who have no clue what they're talking about, but will go along with whatever the herd says.

only if they drop the price of the ps3. its time to drop it to compete. drop that 400$ ps3 to 300$

Should have done the Walmart deal. $100 gift-card to Walmart with purchase of a PS3.

And really, who wouldn't find a way to easily spend $100 at Walmart.

Had I not already had a PS3 I would have jumped on the deal. As it stood I still considered it just to get another to give to my family.

These LBP sales will rise hugly in a couple o week, surely when its xmas time....

and @ Jerses:

What are you talking about, I own LBP, okey servers somethimes crash or come with an error. But, only 5 levels are "good but not great"???? What, you have played all 60000+ levels already?

My opinion: Parents buy this game for your kids, it a very cool game, your children (and you) will love! Best game for PS3 owners this year.... (next to Fallout 3 and R2)

No...but thats why i buyed the game to play all the +6,000 levels. And havent find any level even close to the ones in story mode. Maybe its not only 5 levels that are good but i have played a lot of levels +200 and 80% of them was crap, levels half done, etc,etc. And when you play online with others in some point you are going to encounter lag. and its not my internet because everyone ingame notice it.

Also i filtered levels by ranking but i think people like to add 5 stars to every level.

Yeah, a lot of people will be buying this for Christmas. Unlike Gears of War, the whole family can play LBP.

Get back to us in January with new totals. Gears 2 will probably still beat it though.

I don't know what on earth they thought they were doing not giving it mainstream TV advertising in the UK. There are trillions of game ads at the moment and Sony don't bother advertising one of their biggest launches... Sheesh.

Considering Sony's past history with advertising products it might've been a good idea not to advertise it >_

This is such a shame as this game is amazing and has so much potential.
Word of mouth? How about Television advertisements?
Would help a great deal.

i'm loving the game so far, i hope more ps3 owners give it a go

What do sony expect would happen when you release crappy commercials in the U.S. that just show sack boys running through a level with no hint that you can make your own game and share it. Isn't that the whole point of LBP. Sony dropped the ball so far on marketing every ps3 exclusive and they hardly play them on t.v. and the new reflection campaign sucks monkey balls. I don't like microsoft but atleast they no how to start the hype machine the gears commercials are actually entertaining to watch sony should fire their marketing team and hire microsofts marketing firm :(

Don't forget Resistance 2. It has to sell to the (relatively small) PS3 user base too. And Insomniac was making waves about how they didn't have to remain exclusive a couple days ago, remember?

If going multi-platform is what insomniac needs to do in order to make better games than R2, then go ahead and do it, or maybe they shouldn't rush out games on a yearly schedule. I would rather have games like LBP as exclusives anyway, you can find shooters anywhere, but LBP is something special that you could really associate with a brand.

Ummm... 17 million vs. 22 million. Smaller, sure, but "relatively small" isn't really accurate.

Even if you think it's 17 million vs. 39 million (which ignores the overlap of multi-system owners), it's still roughly 44% of the potential market.

@Brett
If you think Insomniac are guilty of rushing games to market, you've obviously never played a rushed game. You may not like R2, but you can't make a good argument that it's of low quality.

Sony needs to get familiar with advertising campaigns. There's no reason to not have at least one PS3 running LBP in every single Wal-Mart or other big retailer for this holiday season. There are PS3's bundled worldwide with LBP right? RIGHT?

Walmart is actually a fantastic idea, or gamestop, or any retailer where you can have the opportunity to try it. This is a game that you can't really understand until you try.

marketing sucks period for ps3 games, i live in canada and i cant go 2 hours of watching tv without seeing at least 5 adds for xbox games, gears and fallout, usually back to back.

Sony needs to realise that they need to get adds out for people to support our console. hell i'm excieted about all the games comming out, but i'm active keeping up with news. Hell i bet you 3/4 of the ps3 owner base doesn't even know what killzone2 is or how fantastic it looks.

lets get a little smarter here sony, u got the goods just push em!!

I also live in Canada and I see more PS3 ads than 360 ads. I guess it depends on which shows you watch (well, record actually).

Last night alone I saw two of the wish list ads, plus a MotorStorm ad and the LBP "fun matters" ad. And I saw one Gears ad.

Hang on, Gears of War (the first one) was said to have had preorders that were second only to Halo 2, and it had pretty much the same exposure as this game. Less in fact. LBP since its inception has been hailed as the PS3's killer app and it has had non stop promotion, including mainstream TV/magazine adverts.
Why can't they just accept that it's simply not a game that appeals to the vast majority that would want another shooter.

actually, 750k is the current number for LBP, so that isn't one week of sales, it's ~ 3 weeks. the numbers are low for LBP considering the hype the game had in the months leading to its launch. should sony be worried? no. is it mildly disappointing? yes.

To let everyone know about the lack of advertising LBP and other games, it all comes down to $$$. If you want to market games, you need lots of money to spend. Sony still continues to take quite a hit with every PS3 console they sell, and because of them still being in a lot of debt, that's why they cannot market a lot and invest heavy in a great marketing campaign. MS has tons of money and can easily do it.

To the one who said Sony should drop the price to $300, why should Sony when PS3 comes with a larger HDD, blu-ray, WiFi, and lots of other things you don't get in a 60GB 360. Right now Sony doesn't care how much MS OR Nintendo sells. They have their own projections, and so far according to them, they are ahead of what they were planning to sell at its current price.

Getting back to LBP, I bought the game at launch over the other games, and glad I did. I feel it's the best game since MGS4 and more people should definitely buy it. I see LBP sales picking up over time too.

sony are rubbish at advertising, when they do advertise they make it look stupid

the only time i see ps3 games advertised is when its multiplatform and it comes up at the end which consoles its on. Annoys me when i see multiplatform games and M$ have paid for it to say on xbox at the end, makes it look exclusive

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The struggles of selling an original IP -- Sony talks LBP sales

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