There’s no doubt that LittleBigPlanet is a stunning piece of software, but, in all fairness, its sales so far have been rather less than stellar. It’s all the fault of those horrible other games that dared to launch around the same time, says Sony.

So let’s backtrack a little. LBP makes number four in its first week of sale, beaten by Gears 2, FIFA 09 and Fallout 3. Not too scruffy a debut, and we guess if you’re going to get beaten by anyone it might as well be Gears of War 2. Then again FIFA’s been out for ages and surely LittleBigPlanet has a wider appeal than Fallout 3? But moving on, and the game’s been dumped from the top ten entirely this week - it’s currently residing at 16 and it’s not as if Sony can blame anything like low stock levels (as plagued Wii Fit early on) for the dreary sales.

No, instead they’re falling back on that old chestnut about how greatness is often ignored in its lifetime: “Our industry is littered with examples of brand new innovative titles that have been lauded by the critics but have sold dismally,” says Sony Europe’s PR boss David Wilson.

Elsewhere Wilson reminds us of the positive critical reaction the game received (5 out of 5 on these very pages, 95 aggregate score on Metacritic) and tells how pleased Sony is with the title’s performance, generally speaking - the game is “selling really well on a global basis” , he says. Overall, though, it seems that Wilson thinks LittleBigPlanet would have done much better if only it'd had the market to itself:

“In other times of the year it would be a clear number one - so you have to put the chart in context,” he begins. “This is an incredibly volatile time of year and the chart reflects that - November 7 saw 47 titles released on that one day alone including many big hitters with Christmas number one aspirations. Look at the chart this week - the top four are all brand new entries.”

Well, yeah, but LittleBigPlanet was a brand new entry with Christmas number one aspirations itself, wasn’t it? If not - and, in which case, what was all that massive hype about? - maybe Sony should have considered releasing the game at a less crowded time of the year. Sounds to us that they're just having difficulty stomaching those sour grapes…