LittleBigPlanet looms, but Microsoft lacks UGC plan of its own

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Michael French in Seattle Jul 23 2008, 8:47am

GAMEFEST 08: Format-holder has ‘no short term plan’ for games with UGC – but says devs are welcome to try

In the seemingly-eternal tug of war between PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, one of Sony’s regular weapons has been the promotion of its game LittleBigPlanet, the platformer which lets players design and share their own levels. Microsoft, says Sony, has nothing like that in its catalogue – and, well, Microsoft agrees.

At this week’s Gamefest conference in Seattle Xbox Live general manager Ben Kilgore was asked during a session about the new Xbox dashboard interface what Microsoft plans to do about user-generated content in games.

But his answer was that Microsoft has no ‘short term’ plans to chase games which boast UGC elements – and instead is content with the new XNA Creator Club Marketplace and previous user-generated content aspects of Forza or Halo 3.

Those games offer a take on adaptable content which is done “very well”, he said, adding that “we’re hugely supportive of that”.

However he turned the question back to the audience, saying it was an idea to be as much exploited, explored and examined by studios as it is one for format-holders.

Said Kilgore: “In terms of how we support [user-generated content] in a broad platform way… We would love to hear more what your [studios'] ideas are on there.

“What we are doing with community games is a good example how we’re catering to that - but in the short terms we have no plans to do anything else with user generated content.”