Because this isn't LittleBigRacers and SONY's not going the route of taking one of it's platforms and simply making a racer spin-off hoping that fans of the platformer will enjoy the racer because they already tried this with Crash and Jack which were both bigger franchises than LBP at the time so they figured there was no point and probably see it as pointless because not every video game character has the Mario touch. *INHALES*

LittleBigPlanet IP is owned by Sony, isn't it? Carry on.

Sadly it isn't, for the reason I ranted at. But you're very wrong thinking these games are SOOOO different. In fact, they are rather close, both serve the same audience, the people who are interested in stuff like PLAY. CREATE. SHARE.

And the idea wasn't just put a sackboy into a car, they would have put incentive of buying LittleBigRacing by sharing content between the latter and original LBP, and bringing new users to original first by introducing them to the LBP via racing (which could be of more interesting genre to some)

The thing is that Sony simply doesn't even care about growing up their IPs. They are borned to be niche, and Sony is happy to keep them in niche, that's it.

I'd be surprised. Sony published the game but that doesn't mean they own the IP. If Media Molecule were able to secure a publisher why would they sell their IP? Any number of things could have been argreed upon in the contract. MM may have licensed the IP to Sony or they may have sold the rights to a making a single (or number certain of games) or they may have kept full rights and just agreed to a share of profits. Even if they did sell the IP why would United Front Games want to then use that IP (there is no chance Sony would give it them for free)?

I could be wrong of course but it's not quite as simple as you originally suggested.

How do you know they weren't able to secure a publisher by selling their IP?

I'm 99% sure that Sony owns the LBP IP.

I've actually been trying to find out for sure now and came across this on the BBC which suggests you're right:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/03/a_little_big_business.html

So I'll hold my hands up to that one.

@MDMAniac

Even so, there are still a number of issues with including LBP in other games. Whether Sony own the Modnation Racers IP, what deal MM had in place under the contract, whether United Front Games wanted to use LBP and whether Sony thought that setting up 2 seperate IP's is better in the long term than any possible short term return on increased sales of 'Little Big Racer'.

I think you're overestimating the amount of people that bought this for Play.Create.Share. There's no way to determine that though.

I like many people I know bought the game and did no creating. We just played. I honestly think the bulk of sales came from:

1) Good Platformer
2) Endless amount of stages to play

I'm sure quite a few people were attracted by the Creation options, but at the end of the day creators most likely ended up in the minority. Also, for those that really liked LBP's editor, Modnation's won't really be much of a draw. Way too simplistic and not nearly much freedom. A large part of this is simply because we're comparing racer to a very slow paced platformer.

I went to the store and i cant find the beta, has is been removed?

Most likely the 100.000 download limit has been reached already, if so you're out of luck, sorry :/

Oh come on, how can i play Modnation Racers now?