Over the past several months, Sony's much-anticipated The Last Guardian has been through a number of delays, staff changes, and publicity mishaps. Now, the company says that a number of other Sony studios are working to get the project out the door.
In a recent interview with Wired, Sony game design chief Shuhei Yoshida confirmed that God of War studio Sony Santa Monica and a number of other Western developers are offering their technical expertise to aid the Japanese development team.
"Well, you know, it's not just Santa Monica. We have great tech people in Worldwide Studios. We have a central tech group in the U.S. and the UK so we are giving them whatever help they need. Technically, we have the best engineers in the U.S. and Europe, so these teams are helping them, giving advice," Yoshida said.
He said that to realize the team's vision, Sony has to overcome some challenging technical hurdles, and the company is doing what it can to straighten out these issues. As a result of these development challenges, Yoshida said that Sony can't provide a solid launch window.
"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," he said.
Late last year, The Last Guardian saw some additional development shakeups, as producer Yoshifusa Hayama left Sony to join social gaming company Bossa Studios, and project lead Fumito Ueda transitioned into a contracting role as he stepped down from his position as a full time company employee.
Soon after these staff changes, GameStop inaccurately reported that the game had been cancelled and dropped all existing pre-orders, causing some confusion over the game's future. Sony later confirmed that development was still very much on track.
The Last Guardian, which is considered a spiritual successor to the renowned Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, was first announced at E3 2009, and has seen a number of delays since that initial debut.
Some of the most famous and artistically appreciated films went through 'development' hell and seemed like they would never be finished. And wasn't Bioshock nowhere near the original vision that it started with, and yet ended up incredible? The fact is, if they released this thing today, it would probably be somewhat flawed but completely stunning. Hmm, sort of like the team's first two games. Not to mention, the free publicity this is generating is invaluable. I've heard two podcasts spend their entire hour on the subject.
I just happened to revisit the 2009 E3 trailer today. Incredible. Here's hoping it comes out in a reasonable amount of time from now and as close to their final vision as possible. Shadow of the Colossus got me back into gaming because someone was finally exploring the real possibilities available to the medium. I'm hoping this game takes it a step further, but if it's just quirky and beautiful, I'll take that too.
Not to say it's in anyway likely here, but development hell projects can DEFINITELY go the other way too. We've even seen one or two such fiascos come to 'fruition' in the last year.
Fumito Ueda has been described as a perfectionist, someone who got over 500 artist applications for Shadow of the Colossus and only liked 2. Personally if i look at the step up from Ico to Shadow of the Colossus its just incredible. Besides the art style, I would not say they came from the same studio. It makes me very excited for The Last Guardian.
two things: a) yes, please give me your code and design documents to help out, too! ;-) b) just tailor make a new console for the next ueda game right away. :D
I just happened to revisit the 2009 E3 trailer today. Incredible. Here's hoping it comes out in a reasonable amount of time from now and as close to their final vision as possible. Shadow of the Colossus got me back into gaming because someone was finally exploring the real possibilities available to the medium. I'm hoping this game takes it a step further, but if it's just quirky and beautiful, I'll take that too.