text: By January 2009, Media Molecule had 34 employees. A month later, it announced LittleBigPlanet for the PlayStation Portable at the Destination PlayStation meeting. SCE Studio Cambridge had been the primary developer, alongside Media Molecule. They released it in November to positive critical reviews. It was announced on 2 March 2010 that SCE had purchased Media Molecule for an undisclosed sum. Shuhei Yoshida, president of SIE Worldwide Studios, praised the studio's innovation and noted they had "world-class credentials". Evans added that, "Since Media Molecule's inception, we've had a uniquely close relationship with SCE. Over the years they have consistently shown their dedication to Creative Gaming and Media Molecule, not only through their support of the company, but their willingness to take risks and embrace our often unusual approach and ideas." It brought the total number of developers at SCE Worldwide Studios to fifteen. In May 2010, the company officially announced a sequel entitled LittleBigPlanet 2; they released it in January 2011 to critical acclaim. In June, it was confirmed that LittleBigPlanet PS Vita was not being developed by Media Molecule but by Double Eleven, Tarsier Studios and XDev.
  Development of Tearaway began in May 2011. In July at Gamelab 2011 in Barcelona, Reddy announced that Media Molecule were stepping away from LittleBigPlanet to focus on new game ideas. Media Molecule added on Twitter that they would always be involved in LittleBigPlanet to some degree. In July at a Develop conference, the co-founders said they were still involved with LittleBigPlanet 2 pointing to the upcoming PlayStation Move level pack as an example of their on-going work. Healey remarked that, "It's a bit like, if you think of LittleBigPlanet as having a child, Sackboy was our child, you get to the stage where they want to leave home, It's kind of like that." Evans elaborated by saying that Media Molecule is no longer a "single-threaded company" and noted developing similar games all the time would become stale. In January 2012, Media Molecule had spent  on research and development on new, innovative games aiming to reduce the reliance on the LittleBigPlanet brand name.