1.5m new LittleBigPlanet players since PSN outage

LittleBigPlanet 'gives you a reason' to go on PlayStation Network.

Over 1.5 million new users have played LittleBigPlanet since PlayStation Network's 25-day outage in April this year.

Media Molecule confirmed the number during its keynote speech at the Develop conference.

"LittleBigPlanet is not a stagnant community," said Media Molecule co-founder Alex Evans. "There's multiple levels being published every second. You can no longer keep up with the amount of content."

The UK developer also confirmed that over 4.7 million levels have now been published in LittleBigPlanet. In all, these levels have been played almost two billion times.

How many LittleBigPlanet players go on to create their own level? "Basically, everybody publishes a level," said Evans.

During the keynote Phil Harrison, former Sony president of worldwide studios, said Sony's original estimations were that only one per cent of the player base would go to the effort of producing levels. Harrison found the idea of one per cent of players producing levels "pretty impressive" in itself.

Evans thinks one of the best things about LittleBigPlanet is the way it deals with online connectivity, and that the game slowly "coaxes" players onto PlayStation Network. "It gives you a reason to go online," he said, talking about players who find the traditional staples of multiplayer deathmatch a bit too daunting.

"A lot of people use their console and they're a bit afraid of the stigma of a headshot."

Last month Sony said 90 per cent of PlayStation Network users had returned to the service since the outage.

Media Molecule's sequel scored a respectable 9/10 from VideoGamer.com in its LittleBigPlanet 2 review.