Exciting news for all you Sackfans out there – over the next two months we’ve got some pretty darn cool LittleBigPlanet 2 DLC packs heading your way. I’m sure you’ve noticed the title of this post, so let’s not delay any further – from the depths of Midgar, I’m delighted to unveil… the FINAL FANTASY VII costume pack!

Coming to PlayStation Store on July 13th, these costumes will let you re-live the struggle of Cloud, Aeris and the rest of AVALANCHE against Shinra, from of the most iconic and critically acclaimed video games of all time.

Exciting stuff – but that’s not all. I’m sure lots of you have been enjoying the continuing adventures of Cole McGrath in inFamous 2. Those adventures can now continue even further thanks to the inFamous 2 minipack. Released this week, and priced at €2.99 / £2.39, it contains costumes for Good Cole and Bad Cole, as well as a whole host of new stickers. Being a hero is optional in inFamous 2, so this will give you a chance to show your true colours!

On 20th July, the Killzone 3 mini-pack will be released – containing Rico and Hazmat Trooper costumes, and new stickers – I’ve raved about the coolness of the Hazmat Trooper costume in the past, so now you’ll be able to enjoy it for yourself . Like the inFamous 2 minipack, it’ll be priced at €2.99 / £2.39.

The next releases to mark on your calendars soon will be the Toy Story packs that were unveiled at E3 this year. With THREE new costume packs, containing all of your favourite characters, plus a level pack containing brand new Toy Story themed levels to play through, these packs are sure to keep you entertained until the release of the Move pack at the end of the summer. Stay tuned for more details (and pics!) soon.

That’s it for now, folks – enjoy the downloadable goodness!

Oh, just one more thing…

Sephiroth…!
Bom-bom bom-bom… SEPHIROTH!

Don’t worry, he hasn’t been forgotten – the awesome Sephiroth costume will also be released on July 13th. I won’t tease you all anymore – here’s the full range of Final Fantasy VII content that is coming your way…

€1.99 / £1.59 each:
Sephiroth costume
Cloud costume
Aeris costume
Tifa costume

€5.99 / £4.79:
Final Fantasy Costume Pack (contains Sephiroth, Cloud, Aeris, Tifa and bonus Vincent costume)

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One of the highlights of E3 for me this year was seeing Journey receive such an enthusiastic response from everyone (and it did look particularly stunning on a 50 inch screen in the SCEE press room). Here’s a few words from thatgamecompany, the talented team behind flOw and Flower, about their exciting new project…

Hello, there! Coming out of E3 a few weeks ago, we at thatgamecompany couldn’t be more excited about the reception our latest game, Journey, received from both the press and general showgoers. Journey is our third game for PS3 and PSN, and we’re trying something new, something that we hope changes the way people think about online gaming.

As you may have heard, in Journey, players take on the role of travelers headed to a mysterious mountain in the distance. But unlike our previous two games, flow and Flower, Journey presents our vision of what an online adventure can be.  As you explore Journey, you may cross paths with other travelers.  You can to join and play with up to one other player at a time.

But what makes Journey different is that there are no online lobbies, no matchmaking, no PSN IDs, and no chat. You are the character, limited to the ways of communication of the character itself. Will you choose to travel together – or go your own way? What secrets lie in the mysterious, sand-covered ruins of this world?

As mentioned over on the US PlayStation Blog, a small-scale closed beta trial will be taking place in the coming weeks, to test Journey’s innovative and unusual multiplayer functionality. Whilst it’d be amazing to open this out to everyone out there who’s excited about Journey, unfortunately numbers need to be kept very limited for technical reasons. But as it progresses, this trial will be extended into SCEE – the existing Beta Trial community and selected PlayStation Plus members will receive invitations in early July. Look out for more information about selection criteria and timings soon.

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You keen-visioned PlayStation.Blog readers are bound to know that the LittleBigPlanet 2 Move DLC was officially announced at the E3 PlayStation press conference (huzzah!) You were no doubt left with questions around what it does, how it works and what marvels will be possible when our army of LBP creators get their hands on it.

In a nutshell, the Move Pack let’s you create levels with and for the PlayStation Move motion controller, and it includes a set of levels built by Mm to make your creative juices juicier. LBP has always been all about communities creating and sharing, so rather than show you our 200-slide marketing presentation, I’ll hand you over to Andrew, AKA Chimpanzee, creator extraordinaire and editor of the splendid Rocket Cheetah, for enlightenment…

“Back in May I was lucky enough to be invited to the hallowed grounds of Mm Towers to check out the new LittleBigPlanet 2 features they were working on and hang out with some well-known Creators to see what they could do with them. We all knew that Media Molecule were working on an update to the game, introducing brand new tools which make use of the PlayStation Move motion controller, but what we saw was so much more than LBP 2 with added ‘waggle.

15 members of the community from as far afield as the USA and France descended on Media Molecule’s Guildford studios and to kick things off we were given a brief demonstration of some of the features of the Move Pack.

(more…)

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First of all, LittleBigPlanet fans – congratulations are in order. Thanks to all of you, we recently hit a very cool milestone – more than FOUR MILLION LittleBigPlanet levels have now been shared by players around the world.

Four million – or more exactly, 4,141,742 at the moment I’m writing this. Wow. If you played LBP solidly, 12 hours a day, and only played each level for 5 minutes, it would take you *taps calculator frantically* more than 78 years to play through all of them. Phew.

Here’s an additional message to all of you from the folks over at Media Molecule…

For us the most exciting thing has always been seeing what the community does with a LittleBigPlanet game when they get their hands on the new features and tools. We’re constantly delighted – and amazed – by their ingenuity and creativity, and it’s so inspiring to see the level of affection that exists for LittleBigPlanet amongst fans around the world.

Contraption Challenge 13

Next news – the LittleBigPlanet Contraption Challenge has returned! If you’ve no idea what I’m talking about – the Contraption Challenge is a long-running series of tasks to test and reward the creativity of the LBP nation, ably coordinated by community members Nuclearfish and Chimpanzee and the Official PlayStation Community Team.

The challenge this time is to construct a working submarine – check out the full details on the official PlayStation Forums. The closing date is this Sunday, the 17th April, so there’s still time for you to get involved by submitting your own entry (although it might mean pulling a couple of all-nighters!). Alternatively, you could just check out some of the great submissions on lbp.me using this handy link.

If you only look at one thing this week, check out the teaser trailer for the new series of contraption challenges if you didn’t see if a couple of weeks ago – it’s all kinds of awesome.

Upcoming Downloadable Costumes

Finally, an update on some of the imminent downloadable goodness coming to LittleBigPlanet 2. Our next release on the PlayStation Store will be the Tron: Evolution Minipack, which will be released on 27th April at €2.99 / £2.39. In the pack you’ll get two brand new costumes, plus a batch of handy new stickers – here’s some shiny neon pics…

May will see the release of the Killzone 3 Minipack – and I couldn’t resist giving you a sneaky look at one of the two costumes from that pack, as I think it’s one of the coolest LBP costumes I’ve seen. Behold, the Hazmat Trooper…

Combine this together with the original Killzone costume kit (which is fully compatible with LittleBigPlanet 2, remember) and you’ll have all the tools to recreate the battle for Helghan down to the finest detail. With rather more sponge, of course.

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Happy Friday, Sack-fans! There are more and more awesome LittleBigPlanet 2 levels being uploaded every day, which is great to see (and in fact we’re getting very close to a fantastic milestone…) – so great work to all the creators out there.

This week, though, I wanted to give you all a sneak peak at some of the new content that is planned for LittleBigPlanet 2 over the next few months. As all the loyal players of the original LittleBigPlanet will remember, we always like to ensure that there are plenty of new bits and pieces popping up to inspire fresh creations, to let you show some of your other favourite games and movies a bit of LittleBigPlanet love, or just to keep your Sackboy looking a la mode.

First off, be sure you’ve picked up your free St. Patrick’s Day costume from the Store this week – it’s Sackboy’s yearly chance to become Craic-boy, and you surely wouldn’t want to deprive him of that, would you? There will be plenty more time-limited free costumes throughout the year, so keep your eyes peeled.

Last week, the Even More Animals costume pack was released – to ensure that those of you that weren’t able to pick up the LittleBigPlanet 2 Collector’s Edition have the option of dressing up as a Cobra, Mandrill, Crocodile or Vulture, should you so desire. The individual costumes are €0.99 / £0.79 each, whilst the pack of four is available for €2.99 / £2.39.

Looking ahead to next month, you’ll get the chance to take your Sackboy on a journey into The Grid with the Tron: Evolution minipack. Featuring characters from the game that serves as a prequel to last year’s Tron: Legacy movie, this pack will contain two brand new costumes Anon and Abraxas – plus plenty of sleek and stylish Tron-themed stickers to decorate your levels.

You’ll also be seeing plenty of costumes and kits based around other PlayStation characters this year – look out for the brand new Killzone 3 minipack, coming soon and featuring Rico and a very cool looking Hazmat Trooper.

But what better way to kick things off than with some indisputable PlayStation icons? Next week we’ll be releasing three pairs of costumes based alongside the release of PlayStation Move Heroes on PS3 – Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, and Sly & Bentley (I’ve got my fingers crossed for some particularly awesome examples of Sly-themed platforming from the community…). Each pack of two will be on sale for €2.99 / £2.39.

The sharp-eyed amongst you will also have noticed Media Molecule talking about a future Move expansion pack in interviews, and they are indeed beavering away on this. It is a VERY exciting pack that will be coming later in the year, and we’ll be sharing more details soon.

Finally, and moving away from DLC – as part of the Make.Believe campaign for this year, our colleagues elsewhere within Sony have put together a cool new behind the scenes documentary that tells the story of how two of the lovely folk from Media Molecule came to be working there. Neither John nor Christophe were originally working in the games industry, but after people noticed the creative wizardry they were showing in LittleBigPlanet, something amazing happened…

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