All Articles: The Last Guardian

What’s going on with The Last Guardian? It was a no-show at this year’s E3 Expo and SCEA President Jack Tretton’s admission that the game was “on hiatus” only stoked the “it’s been canceled!” fires. Thankfully, Shuhei Yoshida, the President of SCE Worldwide Studios, recently spoke to GamesIndustry International and cleared everything up. And you’ll NEVER guess what he had to say.

OK, that’s a lie, The Last Guardian’s final destination should be obvious to everyone by now.

First about that “hiatus.” Yoshida explained that Tretton misspoke and that development on The Last Guardian never stopped. Instead, the “hiatus” referred to its presence at Sony events such as this year’s E3 Press Conference. Considering the fact that The Last Guardian has been MIA for several years now, this answer makes a lot of sense.

But the real news to come out of this conversation is that The Last Guardian may have moved to the PS4. When asked what platform the game was in development for, Yoshida did’t comment either way. He wouldn’t say the game is coming to the PS4, but he also didn’t say it was still in development for the PS3.

What he did say was that the game is being “re-engineered” and that Sony is waiting for the best time to re-reveal it to the world:

“So, we’re waiting for the right time to re-introduce The Last Guardian in an appropriate way. I can’t… Well, the game is in development, and it’s well staffed, and [Fumito Ueda, the game’s Director] is here, working – even though he’s not a Sony employee, he’s dedicated to the product. But we’re not ready to update yet.”

So there you have it. The Last Guardian is still in active development and will be re-revealed someday… probably for the PS4.

There has been a lot of talk about The Last Guardian – GameStop saying it was cancelled and Fumito Ueda leaving Sony Japan are two of the biggest things. But in an interview with Wired, Shuhei Yoshida shed some light on what’s going on with the game.

Yoshida had a lot of good things to say about Ueda. “He’s on top of the game and coming into the office. He could be the person who’s in the office for the longest time. The difference is that he used to be a regular employee. But now we have a contract to define his role. It’s a very special contribution and role that he plays and we agreed, let’s make it more official, more special. That’s the only difference.”

In spite of the progress, it seems that things don’t have the same momentum they had before. “But the progress is slow and sometimes the team has to go back and review things. There’s a vision that we want to realize but it’s very very tough and technical issue that the team is tackling and some plans have to be made to evaluate and go through the process. At one point the progress was great, so we talked about the timing of the launch in the past. But now it’s making progress, but still not to the level — it’s playable, but not to the point that we can talk about the timing of launch.”

This is a bit discouraging, especially for those of us who definitely want to see the game released, like, next quarter (if not next week). That’s definitely not happening. And it sounds like “sometime in 2012” is no longer a sure thing either. However, my favorite part of the interview with Yoshida was this:

Wired: I’ve heard that people from Sony Santa Monica have gone to Japan to work in tandem, collaborate with the Japan team on this game.

Yoshida: Did you read it on the internet?

Ha! Burn. No, but Sony Santa Monica really is helping with the development of The Last Guardian.

According to a bunch of gamers chiming in all over the Internet, as well as Destructoid (who posted a recording of the call), The Last Guardian has been cancelled. GameStop has been calling to let people who pre-ordered the game know that publisher Sony has contacted them and told them it was cancelled.

Coming on the heels of Fumito Ueda leaving Sony Japan, this is not all that surprising, but it is certainly devastating. I guess Ueda was not as committed as Sony thought he was. Or hopefully, this is just a rumor, or a miscommunication. Or something. Christmas is this week! You can’t cancel Last Guardian!

UPDATE: Sony has informed IGN that The Last Guardian is not cancelled. Furthermore, GameStop issued a correction, stating the calls were due to the game being removed from their system due to its lack of a release date.

Fumito Ueda, the director of the upcoming The Last Guardian, has decided to leave his position at Sony Japan. The developer, who also created the critically acclaimed Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, will remain with Team Ico as an independent contractor (not officially under Sony’s employ) to finish development on The Last Guardian.

According to Sony, Ueda is “committed to completing” the game.

No reason was given for Ueda’s departure from the company, but with The Last Guardian entering its seventh year of development in 2012, perhaps the project became too big for him.

[Source: Gamasutra]