I cannot even form the words or put together my thoughts in a way to even comprehend what I have just read. The leader of Team Ico and creator of both Ico and Shadow of The Colossus, Fumito Ueda, has left Sony to work in a more freelance fashion. Although He will continue to work on The last Guardian, I can’t help but feel that this decision is going to have some serious repercussions on Sony and Ueda’s relationship.

I can understand any developer wanting to pull his or her own reigns without an overlord constantly telling them what they should or should not be doing with the product, but as far as I can tell it doesn’t seem like he has ever had that problem. All of Team Ico's games have been successful and unique. There is plenty of speculation surrounding exactly why he left but now all of the delays surrounding The Last Guardian seem to make sense.

According to an article at Develop he may have left the company some time ago and, while working in a more freelance fashion, has continued the development of The Last Guardian. Doing it this way may be one of the reasons for all of the delays as of late and the lack of a playable demo despite the long development time. The Last Guardian was first announced way back in 2009 after all.

So far it seems that it may be even longer than anyone expected before the game is ever show in playable form. In the same article “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.’”

Fumito Ueda has said that he will continue to work for Sony until The Last Guardian is finished but the way things are going, who knows how long that will be?



Fumito Ueda 'quits Sony' (Develop) http://www.develop-online.net/news/39247/Fumito-Ueda-quits-Sony?