The Last Guardian still in the works, but not the priority right now, says Fumito Ueda

The former creative director of Team ICO has reiterated that The Last Guardian is still in development, though admitted other projects within SCE Japan Studio are taking priority.

Speaking with the latest issue of Famitsu, Fumito Ueda, who has been working at Sony in a freelance capacity since December 2011, said that SCE Japan Studio is focusing on Puppeteer and Knack for now.

“It’s under earnest development,” said Ueda-san. “However, SCE Japan Studio, who’s working on The Last Guardian, also has titles like Puppeteer and Knack, and those are only the ones currently announced. Those are taking priority right now.”

The Last Guardian has had a long-winded and tumultuous development cycle. The game was originally unveiled at E3 2009, though little else on the game has been shown since. Sony previously targeted a holiday 2011 release date, although this failed to materialize.

News of various issues with the game’s development soon surfaced, and since Ueda-san’s departure from Sony, production on the PlayStation 3-exclusive has seemingly slowed to a crawl. Speculation has run rampant that the title has been moved to PlayStation 4, though Sony insists it is still on track for its current-generation machine.

At E3 this year, Jack Tretton, CEO and president of Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA), said The Last Guardian was on hiatus, although Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida quickly asserted that the game was still in the works.

Team ICO has released only two titles to date, ICO and Shadow of the Colossus, the latter now being eight-years-old.