Fumito Uedo No Longer With Sony

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Fumito Uedo No Longer With Sony

The father of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus leaves Sony.

After weeks of speculation Gamasutra has now confirmed that Ico and Shadow of the Collosus creator Fumito Ueda is no longer employed at Sony.

Sony released a statement on Monday confirming that while Ueda is no longer a Sony employee, he will be finishing up work on the oft delayed The Last Guardian on a contractual basis, stating that he is “committed to completing” the project.

This announcement comes following the sudden departure of Yoshifusa Hayama, a producer on The Last Guardian, who left Sony for a position in the social gaming company Bossa Studios.

There has been no word at this time indicating if this series of departures will further impact the release of The Last Guardian, nor is it known what Ueda’s plans are for the future.

#Ico #Shadow of the colossus #Team ico #Departure

Comments

Angelo Grant Staff Writer

12/13/2011 at 10:21 AM

In my opinion, this is great news. This means he's no longer chained to Sony and can basically pursue what he wants on whatever platform he wants.

You gotta wonder what led to this though.

daRth_kiLL

12/13/2011 at 03:12 PM

i wonder if Sony was pressuring him to crank out Last Guardian at a faster pace than he's accustomed to working at.

Jesse Miller Staff Writer

12/13/2011 at 03:15 PM

@Darth quite possible. The team has only pushed out two games since 1997 (Ico and Shadow of the Colossus). And with those titles being awesome but not profitable I can totally see Sony banging on his door saying, "What are you doing man? We need to get this game done."

I just hope The Last Guardian doesn't suffer for it. And when the game finally is done, I don't think that Team Ico will be around much longer.

daRth_kiLL

12/13/2011 at 04:52 PM

Wow. Unless you're doing CoD or Skyrim numbers with your releases, 2 games in 14 years is definitely enough to make the Powers look at what you're doing and be more inclined to deem it unviable.

While I can't deny the quality and fun inherent in Shadow (never played ICO), that game's a cult hit at best, right? On the day Shadow/ICO HD was released on PS3, I was literally THE ONLY person to purchase it during release week from my local Gamestop. It's safe to assume that it'll be practically the same crowd who bought Shadow/ICO for ps2 buying Guardian, yeah?

Julian Titus Senior Editor

12/13/2011 at 08:10 PM

@darth You know, I was wondering about the Ico/Shadow HD sales. I mean, this is what gamers said they wanted, right? Gamers "love" these games, don't they? Even though Ico sold terribly, and Shadow sold okayish (it hit Greatest Hits status, but the bar had been lowered to qualify by that point).

Hardcore gamers say that these are the things they want, but when the time comes to put their money where their mouths are (quite literally, in fact), nothing changes. Games like this still fall by the wayside and do poor sales compared to other titles. If Last Guardian passes a million sales in its first month I'll be shocked.

TripOpt55

12/13/2011 at 11:23 PM

I love Shadow of the Colossus and enjoyed Ico, but The Last Guardian has been in development for six years and its not ready for release. If Sony was on them to try and get this thing done, I can't really blame them. I just can't imagine it would take this long unless there were some problems going on or just some inefficiency happening. I mean there are other studios at Sony of similar size putting out games (Sucker Punch and Media Molecule are quite small and both have 2 PS3 games plus DLC out). As much as I like Team Ico, I imagine patience is/was running thin over at Sony.

PixlBit