President of Sony Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida has revealed some new information regarding the PlayStation 3 action-adventure and heavily delayed, The Last Guardian.
The guys over at 1UP recently asked Yoshida what the situation was with regard to the current development of the game and also what has happened since designer of The Last Guardian, Fumito Ueda stunned the gaming world with news that he has left Sony to work as a freelancer.
Can you give us any update on The Last Guardian? Have you seen it recently?
Oh yeah, yeah. I’ve been seeing it.
Is it still healthy and good?
Well you know, there was a rumor that Fumito Ueda left the company or something like that.
That was confirmed, right?
Well it’s confirmed in terms of the status of his relation to the company — he was an employee, and now he’s working on a contract basis. You know, we discussed an arrangement so he could focus on the creative side. But his work and his presence on that team never changed, so it was just more a contractual rearrangement, and that was taken [by many] as “he left.”
Does he still work in the office?
Absolutely. Absolutely. He comes in every day, and he’s probably one of the people who works the longest hours. The project has been making progress, but slow progress. So that’s tough, but we haven’t changed any focus. It’s still a really important project and a vision we want to see realized, and Fumito’s vision is really causing a very difficult challenge for the developers, so there’s some scrapping and rebuilding — iteration in the process. That’s why [it’s taking so long].
So back to your earlier comment, did he become a contractor so he could work on the creative side rather than the business side?
It’s a personal matter, so I can’t really say.
Do you think he’ll continue to work with Sony after The Last Guardian is finished?
If this project goes well — you know, fingers crossed — we’ve worked with him for a long time so yeah I certainly hope we can maintain a relationship.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42nM2KYZiWo[/youtube]
Source: 1UP.
