Shawn Layden, CEO of SCEA and successor to Jack Tretton, has refuted IGN’s claim that The Last Guardian has been cancelled.
Speaking to Geoff Keighley in a pre-E3 interview (via VG24/7), Layden said The Last Guardian is in "full development" at Sony Japan.
Just interviewed Shawn Layden, new CEO of SCEA. He says The Last Guardian is in full development in Japan. Unequivocally. Full intvu tmrw.
— Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley) June 9, 2014
This directly contradicts IGN’s report, which early this morning lit the still-awake gaming world ablaze with word from a source inside Sony that the game had been declared cancelled at an internal meeting. After SCEA’s Scott Rohde denied this claim on Twitter, IGN’s Steve Butts amended the story to clarify that the internal source had spoken to IGN Russia, from whom IGN’s U.S. site derived the story.
@notaxation @yosp and I laughed at this rumor over dinner. The Last Guardian has NOT been cancelled.
— Scott Rohde (@RohdeScott) June 8, 2014
IGN had changed the headline of their story, originally "E3 2014: The Last Guardian Cancelled" to "E3 2014: The Last Guardian May Be Cancelled.” After further updates and clarification, IGN ultimately retracted the story. Steve Butts has since issued an apology to IGN readers, Sony, and Team ICO for not confirming the information with SCEA before publish. The info in question was told to journalists by a representative of Sony Russia, likely the victim of miscommunication between Sony’s global branches.
For now, it seems The Last Guardian is safe, but whether Team ICO’s long-troubled follow-up to Shadow of the Colossus will make an E3 2014 appearance remains to be seen. I think it will, and with two Sony figureheads affirming its ongoing development in such rapid succession, PlayStation’s E3 2014 press conference is shaping up to be a litmus test for its dedication to and faith in the project.