Had The Last Guardian remained on PS3 some features would have been compromised

By Stephany Nunneley

Had development of The Last Guardian continued on PlayStation 3, the team would have been forced to “compromise some features,” according to Sony Worldwide boss Shuhei Yoshida.

Speaking with Eurogamer during E3 2015, Yoshida said neither creator Fumito Ueda nor anyone else working on the title wanted this to happen. In order to eliminate the technical hurdles encountered during development on PS3, the game was simply moved over to PlayStation 4.

“Simply, we failed. We decided, no, we cannot make it [on PS3],” said Yoshida. “The trailer that we showed at E3 2009 was sped up. It was from the development system but we took it frame by frame and made it run smoothly. Ueda-san, his style of development is very set out, clear, like a vision, at the beginning of the project. Because he is an artist, he creates a short video to show to the team members, this is what we make. So the vision is totally the same.

“Because of the technical difficulty, running the game at the frame-rate required that the team look to compromise some features – the number of characters that Ueda-san wanted to do – if we were to continue on PS3. But because we moved to PS4, now he can make what he wanted. So people say it looks like the same game – there’s a reason.”

Yoshida also confirmed PS4 system architect and Knack creator Mark Cerny is helping out on The Last Guardian, but contrary to rumors, Cerny did not take over development of the title.

Cerny’s only role is providing technical advice to the development team, due to the fact he obviously knows the ins-and-outs of PS4 best.

“He’s giving technical advice. It’s not like that rumor said, that he took over the project to finish it, that’s totally bogus,” said Yoshida. “He’s been giving advice and consultation to many first-party projects; we are long-standing partners. He obviously architected PS4, so he works with multiple first-party teams, and The Last Guardian team is one of them.

“Because it was a technical issue that made the project so long, he and other central tech groups that we have, many smart people, helped Japan Studio to re-engineer and test it. Mark spent lots of time giving advice.”

The Last Guardian started development in 2007 and will finally be released next year on PS4, per Sony’s announcement during E3 2015.