The development cycle of The Last Guardian took another blow, as shortly after longtime Team Ico producer Fumito Ueda announced that he was no longer with Sony, executive producer Yoshifusa Hayama has bolted the development team to join social game developer Bossa Studios as creative director.
According to Bossa Studios exec Henrique Olifiers, ”The appointment of Yoshifusa marks a great day in our journey and of social gaming as a whole. In Monstermind we have already bought to market a game that breaks the traditional social gaming mould; one that works in real-time and with multiplayer elements. Now we have in-house one of the finest creative minds in the gaming industry, who not only shares our vision for creating ‘anti-social’ games that people love, but will make social games as compelling and visually stunning as their console counterparts.” The developer also noted Hayama’s record of working on the Final Fantasy series and Ico.
The Last Guardian, which was revealed back in 2009, has been delayed several times, and with creative talent either leaving the team as Hayama did or hanging on just til completion as Ueda is doing, one has to wonder what is going on behind the scenes. Back in August, SCE Studios president Shuhei Yoshida said of The Last Guardian, ”It’s been very difficult in terms of seeing the progress: not as fast as we’d been hoping for, and the team has been under big pressure.” Those words are growing increasingly ominous.
