One very important, but largely ignored bi-product of the
Little Big Planet delay is the fact that the game is now getting almost shut out in the ultra-competitive Sunday Paper ad space.
Most ads are laid out by retailers almost a month in advance, and the delay of LPB due to the controversial background song has completely robbed the game of its time in front of consumer’s eyes.
Here at GamingNexus HQ in Columbus, OH, the Best Buy and Target ads have no mention of the game at all and the Circuit City and Toys R Us Big Toy book have just small mention of the game (as a follow up to last week’s former release date). The video game ads for Playstation 3 are of course completely dominated by Guitar Hero World Tour and to a lesser extent Fallout 3 and Motor Storm: Pacific Rift.
The people looking forward to the long-awaited release will still undoubtedly pick it up, but with the sudden choice between Motor Storm: Pacific Rift, Guitar Hero World Tour and Fallout 3, some parents and casual game buyers that are not ardent followers of games and release dates could miss the opportunity to pick up LBP during the new launch week and hurt the initial week sales. So not only is Sony eating the costs to re-press Blu-Ray disks of the game, but they also have lost all the valuable promotional time it should have had in a week devoid of any top level competition. Now, with the release supposedly coming sometime in the week of October 27th, launch-week game sales potentially could suffer and the game itself may need a strong Holiday season in order to meet year-end sales expectations and recoup the costs of pressing new disks.
