Sony initially wanted LBP to launch as a free-to-play title

Media Molecule co-founder Alex Evans said during a panel at Develop this morning that at one time, Sony wanted the firm’s LittleBigPlanet to launch as a free-to-play title.

When the game was pitched to Sony a year or so before the release of PS3, the firm’s Worldwide Studios president at the time, Phil Harrison, suggested the title adopt a new business model by being a downloadable, free-to-play game.

"In that initial 45 minute that turned into three hour pitch, which was at the end of 2005, beginning of 2006, Phil said all sorts of buzz words which we still haven't hit," said Evans during the Develop panel shared with with Harrison, along with Media Molecule’s Mark Healy and Kareem Ettouney.

"[He] said it should be free to play, it should have a new business model, it should be downloadable, it should do DLC, it should do user-generated content. Phil was basically raising the bar on what we were pitching."

Harrison provided the developer, known at the time as Brainfluff, six months' worth of funds to create a prototype of the game, codenamed Craftworld.

"That was our internal codename for it for quite a long time," said Harrison. "And then LittleBigWorld was the project name and that was being branded, and we couldn't get the trademark for LittleBigWorld as there was another company in the States called BigWorld.

“And so it became LittleBigPlanet two weeks before GDC 2007."

It was even going to be called LittleBigBang at one point and time, revealed Evans, but apparently the firm found out the term "meant gang bang."

"Well, just in America," added Mark Healy.

First we've heard of that phrase, anyway.

You can read the full thing over on Eurogamer, and get more insight into the panel through Lewie’s earlier post here.