All Articles: The Last Guardian

Executives at Sony Interactive Entertainment have a big reason to celebrate this Memorial Day. And no, it’s not because Hideo Kojima and Guillermo Del Toro are throwing the biggest pool party/BBQ you’ve ever seen.

In reality, the consolemaker has announced that more than 40 million PS4 consoles have been sold to consumers as of May 22, 2016. That means that an average of 43,478 PS4s were purchased each and every day since the system went on sale on November 15, 2013.

“We are truly grateful for the enormous support from our fans and partners across the globe, which helped us achieve this significant milestone in such a short span of time,” said Andrew House, the President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment. “We will strive to deliver even more exciting gaming experiences to our users, further driving the momentum and accelerating the expansion of the PS4 platform and its business this fiscal year by offering an unparalleled lineup of games, bringing our virtual reality system, PlayStation VR, to market, and providing groundbreaking features and network services.”

Sony also revealed that more than 270.9 million PS4 games have been sold since the system’s debut (nearly 300,000 a day, in case you were curious), and that The Last Guardian is still on schedule to launch in 2016.

Presumably, a final release date for The Last Guardian will be announced at this year’s E3 Expo.

Sony refuses to give up on The Last Guardian. An “administrative error” forced the publisher to abandon the game’s trademark last month, but the US Patent and Trademark Office has confirmed that a new application for The Last Guardian was filed earlier this week.

Like the last time it happened, these trademark shenanigans don’t mean much for the future of The Last Guardian. The development difficulties experienced by Team Ico have been well documented and rumors of a PS3-to-PS4 conversion have been making the rounds for almost two years. So the status of the game’s trademark application is the least of Sony’s worries at this point.

All this news really tells us is that Sony wants to retain their trademark on The Last Guardian. At the very least, that’s a good sign for the game’s future as it indicates that Sony doesn’t want anyone else to make a claim on the name. But until Sony makes an official announcement about the game’s future, this is just another non-story in the eight-years-in-the-making saga that has been the development of The Last Guardian.

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?