The Last Guardian Became a PS4 Game in 2012 Due to PS3 Technical Limitations

Now fully confirmed for PlayStation 4 release in 2016, The Last Guardian actually switched development from PlayStation 3 to PS4 in 2012, Sony Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida revealed to Kotaku.

When The Last Guardian was first announced for PS3 in 2009, things were going well. When 2011 rolled around though, “progress became super slow,” with the game suffering from lots of technical issues and just not performing at speed. “The video we showed, the trailer on PS3, was specced up,” he adds. “The game was running at a much lower frame-rate. Some features were still missing.”

Due to the PS3 hardware limitations, it became clear the development team would have to compromise when it came to features and the number of characters. As the game progressed, the PS4 became a reality and work shifted to the new console, with Shuhei telling IGN:

So, that’s the decision that we made some time in 2012, and after that, the team went back to the drawing board in terms of the tech, because the architecture is so different. … But since last year … the game’s playable. So, the team is very excited now. And working very hard.

Also, while Fumito Ueda isn’t 100% certain of the 2016 release window, Shuhei says development is going “very well” and “we have a good amount of confidence in the time that we announced the window that we feel we can hit this time. So, that’s why we introduced it.”

As for that report about Mark Cerny saving development, Yoshida shot it down by saying, “Mark has been consulting many of the first-party teams and projects, giving advice on the tech side – not just him but other central tech groups we have from the US and UK have been helping the team as well.”

[Source: IGN, Kotaku]