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PlayStation's Biggest Delisting Mistake Makes Even Less Sense After Seeing The Franchise's Review Scores
There are many reasons why a game might be delisted from the PlayStation Store. Most often, it’s because they weren’t selling well enough. Sometimes, it’s because they’ve reached the end of their service life: always-online titles that are functionally unplayable once the servers go down. Other games are delisted because they’ve been left behind by evolving hardware, and no longer work after a console is updated. Occasionally, it’s because of licensing issues, or legal ones. Although these games are no longer available for purchase on the digital store, they remain in players’ libraries, collecting dust indefinitely.
But there’s one delisting from the PS4/PS5 store that I can’t wrap my head around. Today, you can no longer purchase LittleBigPlanet 3 on the PlayStation Store. Although it was delisted for a fairly common, understandable reason, I just don’t understand how it’s fallen as far as it has – the series used to be one of the console’s biggest hits, but now, Sackboy’s been swept under the rug.
Sackboy Has Been Abandoned By PlayStation
How The Mighty Have Fallen
PlayStation has always struggled to maintain a single mascot. Over the years, it’s had Crash and Spyro, Jak and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank – but how easily we forget that during the PS3 era, Sackboy was the face of the PlayStation brand.
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It only made sense. Sackboy had everything the most successful video game mascots of all time had, at least on paper. He was the star of a popular platformer that was exclusive to the platform he represented. He was unique, he was recognizable, he was adaptable, he was cute, and he was easily merchandisable.
But today, you can’t purchase a single mainline LittleBigPlanet game on a PS4 or a PS5. The first two are stuck on PS3 with no backwards compatibility, and LittleBigPlanet 3 was delisted from the PlayStation Store in October of last year, with no hope of a sequel.
Media Molecule’s other major PS4 game, Dreams, saw its servers shut down in 2023.
So Sackboy’s been sacked, and replaced with a new mascot: the GOTY-winning Astro Bot. There’s no mention of the series or its mascot in any of PlayStation’s recent marketing. And considering how major LittleBigPlanet used to be to the PlayStation library, it’s a bit of a shock.
LittleBigPlanet’s Main Games Saw Fantastic Review Scores
A 95 On Metacritic
It seems like a fever dream today, but LittleBigPlanet was actually a huge hit for PlayStation in its time. The first game has an aggregated score of 95 on Metacritic, which is pretty major – that puts it in the company of games like GTA San Andreas, Majora’s Mask, and The Last of Us.
Now, the sequels never really lived up to the first game’s reputation – the second got a 91, and the third a 79. Even so, each of them was beloved in its own right, mainly because of a single feature: the ability for players to create and share their own levels.
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The base games were all well and good, but there was a wealth of custom content available in LittleBigPlanet‘s online mode. New levels were constantly being generated, and LittleBigPlanet‘s creative tools gave players opportunities to get really weird and experimental with it.
So, shortly after the online servers went down and player-created content became unavailable, LittleBigPlanet‘s delisting was a bit of a no-brainer, if not inevitable. But that doesn’t mean it was the right choice.
LittleBigPlanet Deserves A PS5 Comeback
Sackboy Returns
Now that Astro Bot has proven that exclusive platformers can make it big on the PS5, it’s time to give LittleBigPlanet another chance. I’d love to see what the series could do with the PS5’s more powerful hardware, perhaps integrating some of the advanced creation tools Media Molecule developed for Dreams to take things even further.
That said, we’re unlikely to see anything of the sort. A series of layoffs impacted Media Molecule in 2023, and it seems to have scaled back, with its next planned title confirmed to be more of a straightforward game than a tool for user-generated content. Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll ever see anything like LittleBigPlanet on PlayStation again, and it’s a shame that part of the console line’s legacy has been left behind.
Source: Metacritic
- Brand
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Sony
- Original Release Date
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November 19, 2020
- Original MSRP (USD)
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$399.99 (Digital Only), $499.99 (Disc Drive)
- Weight
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Digital Edition now weighs 3.4 kg & base version weighs 3.9 kg
