Sony not rushing the Last Guardian

One of the most notable absentees at this year’s E3 was Team Ico’s The Last Guardian and Scott Rohde, the head of software development at PlayStation, was coy on giving any comments on the matter.

E3 is the one event in the entire gaming calendar where everyone who is anyone in the gaming industry pays attention to what the developers and publishers have to say. This year’s E3 saw Microsoft, Sony, Ubisoft, EA and Nintendo give their respective press conferences with some ending up more successful than others.

Microsoft was the first out of the block and after showing off Halo 4 and teasing Gears of War: Judgment the conference failed to build on the head of steam and it was up to third-party developers to keep the media presentation interesting.

It was not a tough act to follow as Ubisoft surprised everyone with their impressive Press Conference and EA’s media presentation was also smooth and showed off plenty of upcoming content.

Sony was another star alongside Ubisoft, showing off a number of titles as well as showing off two new IPs in the shape of Quantic Dream’s Beyond: Two Souls and Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us.

Nintendo’s Press Conference was underwhelming however, ZombiU did look like an impressive title, one that increased interest in the console.

Going back to the Sony Press Conference, it turns out that one or two major announcements were missing: one relating to the next instalment in the Metal Gear Solid series and the second one relating to The Last Guardian.

Commenting on why eagerly anticipated title did not make an appearance during the event, Scott Rohde said, “I will not give you a detailed update, but I will say one thing and it goes back to innovation and to gamers and to quality. That title is going to ship when it’s absolutely ready.”

Rohde stood his ground when bombarded with the same question and simply reiterated his earlier response. He said, “It’s going to ship at sometime, and it’s going to ship when it’s ready. And I think that’s a really important thing to remember, is that it would be very easy to ship a game when it’s not quite ready because we need to meet a business plan.”

The software development head continued by explaining that the most important thing was actually two things, when he could not decide what the most important thing for the studio was. He said, “Gamers are first, and the experiences we provide are first. And that’s why we’re gonna talk about that game when we’re ready to talk about it.”

So apart from having two first priorities, it seems that The Last Guardian is still a long way off and gamers will have to wait some time before they get to see anything than the demos already shown.