When appointments to see Team ICO's The Last Guardian at the Game Developers Conference this year were cancelled without warning, maybe we should have seen this coming: The Last Guardian and HD releases of ICO and Shadow of the Colossus, bundled into a collection, have been delayed. Neither game will be hitting in their respective release windows of winter and spring 2011. Even worse: a new release window hasn’t been set.
This news comes via a posting on the official PS blog, which also carried a message from Team ICO’s game director, Fumito Ueda, amounting to “sorry about the delay, but we need more time for polish.”
That's not all he said, though.
== TEASER ==
I announced at last year’s Tokyo Game Show that the release timing of The Last Guardian, which is currently being developed, would be holiday 2011. However, to provide more challenging and better quality of content to users and to fulfill First Party Studio’s obligations, I decided to postpone its release timing.
All the members of my production team are working together at a fast pace to develop and release the game in First Party Studio quality. I sincerely apologize to all the customers who have been waiting for The Last Guardian for so long, but I beg for your patience. I will also announce the new release timing at a later time.
Will we something new at E3 2011 in June? The Last Guardian first debuted at E3 2009, following the unexpected leaking of an early trailer on a gaming site. The footage shown at E3 2009 was similar but more polished. The game did not show up at E3 2010, but at TGS 2010, the game was given its now-defunct "winter 2011" launch window. Ueda said the game didn’t make it to E3 because his studio had changed its production processes--a move that I wonder is still proving to be troublesome here, as well.
The Last Guardian and Ico and Shadow of the Colossus: The Collection are PS3-exclusives.