The Last Guardian Remains in Development, Confirms Sony

Sony's E3 press conference has come and gone, but the studio has had nothing to show of Team Ico's long-awaited title, The Last Guardian.

Contrary to rumors that the game has been shelved, or even scrapped altogether, Sony's president of Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida made reassurances that the game remains very much alive and in development at the moment—but that it is perhaps not ready enough for its developers to have showcased it at E3.

Speaking with CVG, Yoshida said, “It’s alive and kicking in terms of development,” and added, “If you visit Japan Studio there are lots of people working on it.

“But as [designer Fumito Ueda] shared with people a couple of months ago, we really want to be confident next time when we introduce The Last Guardian to the public, so we are waiting for that time to come.”

The game had originally been planned for release in 2011.

"Game development is not easy at all," added Yoshida. "The Last Guardian looks to be an extreme case but actually I don't think that's the case. What's extreme is the vision of Ueda-San and the team, which is extremely interesting for all of us including myself, consumers and media people. So that kind of keeps us going, even when they hit really difficult technical issues. If it were another project we might have just finished in the middle.

"I really appreciate that people are still anticipating the game. That's really positive."