The Last Guardian Isn't Cancelled, Sony Says

Update: IGN has retracted their original report and apologized.

"The source for this information was, in my opinion as IGN’s Editor in Chief, credible enough to justify running the story," said IGN's Steve Butts. "While there is still a discrepancy with what our source has said, Scott Rohde’s Twitter post makes it clear that our original source was in error. The business of handling news sources involves some assumption of risk and last night my evaluation of that risk was clearly in error."

Original article: Team Ico's The Last Guardian is the subject of a last-minute E3 2014 rumor. A new report suggests that the game won't appear at the convention and, what's more, has been cancelled.

IGN Russia says that a source at Sony confirmed that the game is "finally cancelled." The cancellation was supposedly confirmed at an internal meeting last week.

It didn't take long for Sony to respond. Scott Rohde, head of Playstation software product development at Sony Worldwide Studios America, denied IGN's claims on Twitter:

In other words, we've found ourselves in another fun episode of "journalist says one thing, publisher says another thing." It's tough to say who's telling the truth here because neither's offering up any hard evidence.

Fortunately, this whole situation could be cleared up as early as tomorrow. If Sony shows off The Last Guardian during their E3 2014 press conference, we'll know for sure that the game still exists. If The Last Guardian doesn't make an appearance at E3, though, the mystery will continue.

That would be annoying.

The Last Guardian has been in development since 2007. Sony announced the game for PS3 with a trailer at E3 2009. They initially planned to release The Last Guardian in 2011 but delayed the game numerous times since then.

It's easy to believe that the game's dead. There's plenty of evidence to support the theory. The lead designer left Sony and the company didn't renew the trademark for the game's title. Sony's announcement at E3 2013 that the game is on hold didn't inspire confidence, either.

As I said on Friday, the Last Guardian is in the same spot as Ubisoft's Good and Evil 2. It's a prestige game with no release in sight. The publisher tells us it exists but says nothing else. It becomes harder and harder to believe them over time.

We'll see what E3 brings, though. I hope The Last Guardian will be reintroduced for a PS4 launch but I might be setting myself up for disappointment. If the game manages to skip yet another E3, it may be time to write it off as vaporware.

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