“To provide more challenging and better quality of content to users and to fulfill First Party Studio’s obligations, I decided to postpone (the game’s) release timing,” said director Fumito Ueda via a post on the PlayStation blog. He said he would announce a new release window for the game at a later date.
It was not that long ago that Sony nailed down the long-delayed game’s former holiday 2011 release date at a Tokyo Game Show event.
The Last Guardian is the followup to Sony’s critically acclaimed, innovative, artsy (and commercially unimpressive) PlayStation 2 games Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. The games are made by a small team of only about 35 people in Sony’s small internal Japanese development studio, a team that is clearly both taking its time to ensure that the final product is up to fans’ standards, and also having a serious issue grappling with the game’s development: If they know now that they can’t make Christmas, that speaks to some fundamental design issues, problems that won’t go away by throwing contractors at them.
Did you guess that this game’s delay also means the delay of the Ico / Shadow remastered two-pack for PS3? Then you were right; it has been pushed from its slated Spring 2011 release into the near future. I’d imagine it will take The Last Guardian ‘s place this Christmas.
