Bonus Post: LittleBigPlanet Vita Being Sold Early

So, there were rumblings throughout the internet speaking to the possibility that LittleBigPlanet Vita had its street date broken, quite a bit moreso than usual for a release game (not considering that it's two weeks early) and it was more or less proven accurate by a statement made by Sony's PR Manager, Eric Levine, who made a little post on the Playstation Blog about it.

Hi everyone – production on LittleBigPlanet PlayStation Vita was completed earlier than expected, and due to the excitement from our retail partners, some have decided to put it on shelves as soon as the product was received. You’ll still be able to fully enjoy all the offline features of the game, but the servers will not go live until September 18th. We apologize for any confusion this may cause and will keep you posted on any further updates.

That statement is basically saying "GameStop broke street date because I don't know, and we're not going to go after them because it means they're selling our game and that's pretty cool at least", which is a rather nice way to handle it, really.  They also point out that because the game was being sold, again, two weeks early that the servers weren't online and won't go online until a week before.  This is probably customary procedure, as not only do companies tend to try and stress test them, but so that reviewers can partake in the online offerings of a game for the purpose of the review.  Again, this is a pretty cool move to say "Just so you know, the servers are going up this day" instead of....well, just not mentioning it, or even worse, trying to deter people from playing it online on the 18th.  Which, if the Sound Shapes release is anything to go by, would probably be alright, since it would likely have the effect of having people slowly ween themselves to them when it becomes 'more okay' with each passing day, instead of slamming them day one, ensuring that the traffic makes it difficult to play.

I don't generally advocate looking into the comment sections of posts I link to because they are generally a sinkhole of idiocy and this is really no different.  However, I have gazed into the eyes of madness and if you should choose to do so yourself, you'll see that a lot of people are unhappy about this for reasons that....are quite silly, really.  Namely that Sony wasn't prepared for GameStop to break the street date by two full weeks and, as such, aren't releasing the digital version of the game early.  Since clearly, clearly all you have to do to release a game digitally is flip a switch, right?  RIGHT?!  It can be done whenever because Digital Distribution is just magical like that and when the switch is flipped, you can pay for it with unicorn farts and sunshine nuggets.  Because this is imagination land, you see.

For my part, I'm just going to brush that off because I know that the 19th, not the 25th, is the day that I will have LittleBigPlanet Vita in my hands, and thus the 19th will be a glorious day.  Unless GameStop shennanigans occur which would be a surprise, as I've never been on the receiving end of one of these 'horror stories' that float around out there when it comes to GameStop as a whole.  I'm not figuring that I will be, but there is a fairly sizeable amount of weirdness going on already.  Namely that they told me to come in on the 19th to get it which is A) not the release date and B) a Wednesday when games are generally released on Tuesday.  Still, a call to the store before I go there will likely save a lot of hassle on my part, so I'm none too worried.  And I'm certainly excited to have it that much closer to the horizon since I'll be jumping right into the creator after I get enough pieces to put a decent level together.  And it will be glorious.