As promised, The Last Guardian once again failed to make a showing at Sony’s E3 press conference this year, adding to the speculation that the long awaited PS3 exclusive could be headed towards vaporware status. Speaking to Gamespot, PlayStation software development boss Scott Rohde assured fans that this was not the case and stated that The Last Guardian will ship only when it’s “absolutely ready”.
“I will not give you a detailed update, but I will say one thing and it goes back to innovation and to gamers and to quality. That title is going to ship when it’s absolutely ready.”
“It’s going to ship at some time, and it’s going to ship when it’s ready. And I think that’s a really important thing to remember, is that it would be very easy to ship a game when it’s not quite ready because we need to meet a business plan. Gamers are first, and the experiences we provide are first. And that’s why we’re gonna talk about that game when we’re ready to talk about it.”
The Last Guardian was first publicly hinted at back in 2008 in a Sony job listing but speculation puts the start of development two years prior to that, after Team Ico wrapped up their work on Shadow of the Colossus for the PlayStation 2. The game was officially revealed at E3 2009 and was eventually given a release date of 2011, which was later pushed back to a “TBA” future date. Since then the only details about the state of the game come from brief Sony executive statements like this, which never go much farther than to state that the game still exists.
Given that history, and the reasonable speculation that the PlayStation 4 could arrive either late next year or early 2014, I find it hard to believe that The Last Guardian is still scheduled to be a PS3 game. It’s the only explanation (aside from complete incompetence on the part of Team Ico) as to why Sony won’t nail down a release window or can’t produce a short demo for a game that has been in development for six years.
It’s still possible that we could get a reveal of The Last Guardian at E3 next year and a release shortly after, but at this point that would be the only outcome that I would be shocked to see happen.
Source: Gamespot