Microsoft tried to “steal” LittleBigPlanet from Sony, says co-founder of Media Molecule

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According to Media Molecule co-founder Mark Healey – who is also the creative director of LittleBigPlanetits sequence and dreams – at the beginning of the creation of the LBPMicrosoft was “lurking” and trying to “steal” the game from Sony.

In a new interview with MinnMax (which also revealed that the studio’s next game should be something normal and not a tool), via Kotaku, Healey details the story of LittleBigPlanetyour feelings about servers LBP3 be turned off forever and much more. But perhaps the most interesting story from the interview is the story of how Microsoft tried to step in and grab the game post-GDC 2007. At the time, Sony had already funded six months of development.

“The funny thing is that we actually had nothing in writing to say that we would continue [com a Sony] or that they owned what we were doing, that’s what I remember about it,” said Healey, who left Media Molecule in 2023.

“And actually, I remember after we showed [a demonstração de LittleBigPlanet] at GDC…someone from Microsoft was on the prowl. And they were trying to stop us, so to speak, from going with Sony. And technically, we could have done [isso]. We could have thought, ‘yeah, screw it, let’s go with Microsoft. They’ll probably give us a lot of money.’”

But Healey says the folks at Media Molecule felt doing so would be “very wrong” and “morally corrupt.” “[A Media Molecule e um representante do Xbox] went out and got a little drunk,” said Healey, “And it was literally – when we were dropping the (Xbox) guy off at his hotel – he was like ‘oh shit, I was on a mission here! I have to at least say something’”.

“And he said, ‘oh, by the way, guys, you know we’d be happy to blah, blah, accept you if you want to come on board with us’ or something like that. And you could tell he was almost embarrassed to say it, because it would have been a very perverse thing to do,” says Healey.

Healey then clarified to MinnMax that, in hindsight, it seems strange that Sony hasn’t written anything about LittleBigPlanet after financing it. He suggested that some of the details may have been mixed up and that “there must have been something legal in place to say that [a Sony] was property [de LBP]”. But he wasn’t sure and others told him that, at least initially, that wasn’t the case.

Regardless, when asked whether LittleBigPlanet could have been an Xbox franchise in an alternate timeline, Healey was blunt: “no, that would never have happened,” and added that Media Molecule enjoyed working with Sony and developed relationships with people at the company.

Below you can see the presentation of LittleBigPlanet at GDC 2007.