Believe it or not, Team Ico’s The Last Guardian has been in development for almost eight years now. The PS3 was a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed young platform when the game first entered production. But with that console’s end-of-life rapidly approaching, fans have long speculated (with an assist from Sony) that when the game is released, it’ll be for the PS4. However, there’s always the possibility that the game will be canceled outright, which is what makes today’s news so worrying.
In an update to The Last Guardian’s trademark status, the US Patent and Trademark Office has confirmed that the game’s trademark has been “abandoned” by Sony. Now, on the surface, this doesn’t mean much. Sony could have decided to change the game’s title (because, let’s face it, the “Last Guardian” name carries a lot of baggage) or the rumored PS3-to-PS4 conversion is taking longer than they thought and somebody forgot to file the proper paperwork. So this could be nothing. OR IT COULD BE EVERYTHING!
For now, I’m siding with nothing. Sony contacted GameSpot this morning and said that the trademark abandonment was an “administrative error” (so, the paperwork thing). It’s possible this is just marketing speak and Sony is too embarrassed to admit the game has been canceled (though, officially, they say it’s still in development), but remember that the publisher abandoned The Last Guardian’s trademark once before before reclaiming it a few days later.
Either way, it got us talking about The Last Guardian again, so… yay?
