Let's Have A LittleBigPlanet History Lesson.

The accessibility of the PlayStation Store within the game makes the package ripe for freemium potential, and when you factor in DLC content packs for costumes, stickers and materials it's easy to see how the title could adapt to that business model.

In fact: that was the original intention — at least from Sony's point-of-view. Speaking at the Develop conference this morning, Alex Evans revealed that former Worldwide Studios gaffer Phil Harrison proposed the game be given away as a PlayStation Network download.

“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.

“[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 was of course spouting buzz-words that have become common today, but at the time were radical concepts. The SCE gaffer gave the team, then known as Brainbluff, six months worth of funds to create a prototype of LittleBigPlanet, which was originally called 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.”

Another proposed name for LittleBigPlanet was apparently LittleBigBang, but the firm opted against the name due to "gang bang" connotations.

[source vg247.com]