Acclaimed developer confirms he will finish The Last Guardian project
The creative figurehead behind Ico and Shadow of the Colossus has yet to respond to suggestions that he has quit Sony Japan with his third project unfinished.
Fumito Ueda is believed to have departed as Team Ico creative director at Sony’s Tokyo development hub; a situation which has yet to be clarified due to Sony’s company-wide gagging order.
And Ueda himself is unwilling to address the rumour, but yesterday assured he is still working on The Last Guardian in a message posted on his personal Twitter account.
News surfacing last week suggested that the 41 year-old will leave Sony once The Last Guardian project is complete, and that he is currently finishing the game in a freelance capacity.
Ueda did not address the claims, though is again active on his personalised Twitter account.
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His reasons for leaving the studio, if true, are unclear.
The Last Guardian, a key PlayStation 3 project that completes a trilogy of Team Ico exclusives for Sony, has not yet been unveiled to the public in playable form.
This year it was conspicuously absent at both the Tokyo Game Show and E3.
The first mention of the title in public was nearly three years ago, in March 2009, though the production phase will likely have run further back.
Shuhei Yoshida, who commands Sony’s global fleet of 16 development studios, recently claimed progress for The Last Guardian has been “very difficult, not as fast as we'd been hoping for, and the team has been under big pressure.”
Absolutely *gutted*. Even if it is true that he will finish the project in a freelance capacity, what does this mean for the future of Team Ico beyond TLG? I would be devastated to find out he has been head hunted by Microsoft or Nintendo. Ueda and Playstation go together like peaches and cream... if I ever saw an Xbox title from great man I think I'd puke. Unless future games are multi-platform, which I suppose would be acceptable. The only way I could feel any better was if he came out and said he wanted to direct movies, as this man really is an auteur, the likes of which Hollywood has rarely seen (think Kubrick, Scorsese, Hitchcock and Terry Gilliam all rolled into one). If he is going to continue in the games industry, I can also see an exodus of Team Ico staff following him out of the door to his new studio... which would mean future 'Team Ico' games coming out of Sony Japan would be unrecognisable. I just hope his departure was amicable and the relationship with Sony is still good.
Please, Fumito, put us out of our misery and tell us your future plans!
