Little Big Planet 2 due winter 2010, original sells 3 million

Following Friday's unofficial confirmation of Little Big Planet 2, Sony today made the game's existence officially official. This morning, the PlayStation Blog took the wraps off the sequel, which first surfaced in April via a loose-lipped musician's Twitter post. That outing came five months after a level designer at the game's developer, Media Molecule, shot down sequel talk, saying a retail follow-up would be "counterproductive" to the game's massive community.

Today, Sony made much of the achievements of said community--which has created over 2 million levels for Little Big Planet--when it formally announced Little Big Planet 2. Once again developed by Media Molecule, which Sony bought outright in March, the game will introduce an upgraded toolset for level creation. It will ship exclusively for the PlayStation 3 in "winter 2010," a release window that traditionally runs from December to March.

According to Sony, the sequel will one-up its predecessor by letting players create not just game levels, but also games themselves. The company said this will include "top-down racing games, multiplayer shooters, flying side-scrollers," as well as role-playing games.

A brand-new trailer (viewable below) shows that Little Big Planet 2 players will be able to link various levels to create lengthy games and create intelligent non-player characters. As outlined in GameSpot's brand-new hands-on preview, this latter feat will be achieved via in-game "microchips," which will let players program object and NPC behavior.