President of SCE Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida says that western developers under Sony, like Sony Santa Monica and some others are now working with Japan’s Team Ico to fully develop (finally) their title, The Last Guardian. Yoshida also claimed that even though Fumito Ueda has left Team Ico, he is still working on the project, saying that “he’s on top of the game and the team is making progress”.
“He never left the team,” he said on Ueda while talking to Wired. “He’s on top of the game and the team is making progress. But the progress is slow and sometimes the team has to go back and review things.
“There’s a vision that we want to realise but it’s very, very tough and [the] technical issue that the team is tackling and some plans have to be made
to evaluate and go through the process.
“At one point the progress was great, so we talked about the timing of the launch in the past. But now it’s making progress, but still not to the level – it’s playable, but not to the point that we can talk about the timing of launch.”
Yoshida says that among the teams helping with the game’s development is the creator of Sony Santa Monica.
“Well, you know, it’s not just Santa Monica,” Yoshida said. “We have great tech people in Worldwide Studios. We have a central tech group in the U.S. and the U.K. so we are giving them whatever help they need. Technically, we have the best engineers in the U.S. and Europe, so these teams are helping them, giving advice.”