Fumito Ueda has left Sony

[CDFN]

Japanese video game development sources indicated the 41-year-old is working on finishing oft-delayed PlayStation 3 exclusive The Last Guardian in a freelance capacity.

Ueda's departure from Sony internal development studio Team Ico is one of the reasons for the game's protracted development, Eurogamer was told.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-11-30-the-last-guardian-creator-fumito-ueda-leaves-sony-rumour

This is pretty shcking news for me if true. No wonder TLG is taking forever. Ueda is Team Ico so I guess this will be their last game.

[Yggdrasil]

41? I thought Ueda was 30-something for what I've read before.

...oh well.

Oh no and yet oh yay! Hope he keeps making wonderful games and hasn't gone off to build playgrounds.

Ha, I wasn't the only one who remember the creator of Katamari with this news. I didn't find anything shocking though, in fact, I think is pretty weird that this didn't happen sooner.

[Eusis]

When it's something this potentially big and it's unconfirmed spell that out in the fucking topic. Failing to do so makes it deceptively named, whether or not you intended it.

[Prime Mover]

CDFN... that is kinda jumping the shark there, buddy. Nothing would surprise me one way or another, but I'm guessing that this isn't true. The sad thing is that I'll not be able to play LG at all, since I really can't justify buying a PS3 at this point... I've gotta save up for another microphone.

[Yoda]

I traded the bluesmobile for a microphone

[Jonathan Ingram]

Ueda's departure from Sony internal development studio Team Ico is one of the reasons for the game's protracted development, Eurogamer was told.

More like, "Ueda's departure from Sony internal development studio Team Ico is the outcome of the game's protracted development, Eurogamer was told."

Surprised he`s been kept around for so long(provided this rumor is true). It`s been 7 years since PSP`s release, 5 since PS3`s and not a single game of his has been shipped for either of this.

[CDFN]

Ueda's departure from Sony internal development studio Team Ico is one of the reasons for the game's protracted development, Eurogamer was told.

More like, "Ueda's departure from Sony internal development studio Team Ico is the outcome of the game's protracted development, Eurogamer was told."

Surprised he`s been kept around for so long(provided this rumor is true). It`s been 7 years since PSP`s release, 5 since PS3`s and not a single game of his has been shipped for either of this.

Yeah, I'm impressed with the freedom sony gives him considering that his games don't set the charts on fire. It's nice to have these games in your portfolio but you have to draw the line somewhere. TLG's development will end up being longer than GT5's and GT is sony's biggest franchise... Even Yamauchi was being pressured to get the damn game out the door. You just can't have a studio that let's an entire hardware generation go by without releasing a single game. We don't even have a friggin' release date, not even a time frame. The game wasn't even at TGS for Christ's sake.
I hope they provide an update for this soon, I still don't know if it's true. It wouldn't make sense to fire him and then hire him to finish the game as freelancer, I think they would wait untill he finished the game.
If he decided to leave that's a bit odd, they give him all the time in the world and let him do whatever he wants, even after his first game was a commercial failure. I'm really curious to know more about this.

[Jonathan Ingram]

If he decided to leave that's a bit odd, they give him all the time in the world and let him do whatever he wants, even after his first game was a commercial failure. I'm really curious to know more about this.

Maybe after so many years of development Yoshida finally told him that it was time to finish the damn game, but Ueda couldn`t cope with the "pressure" and decided to quit. :) Either way, if he really has decided to leave SCEJ, we probably won`t hear much from him in the future, just like we don`t from Kenji Eno, Keita Takahashi and Yasumi Matsuno.

On a sidenote, I think Keichiro Toyama is just as talented as Ueda and can actually produce games in a timely manner(Siren 2 in 2006, Siren: New Translation in 2008, Gravity Rush scheduled for next February), but doesn`t have the luxury of having his own studio within SCEJ. I hope this changes soon.

[Prime Mover]

I traded the bluesmobile for a microphone

I traded the micromobile for a Blue microphone.

[Yoda]

per GI

Ueda has recently tweeted in Japanese: "Recently, I have been getting a lot of questions…don’t worry, as usual, I’m still working hard on The Last Guardian." It's certainly not as in-depth of an update as we were hoping for, but on the bright side: At least half of the original rumor is true, and Ueda isn't totally abandoning the promising project.

Good news

[Eusis]

Confirmed he's gone now, and changed the topic.

At least he'll stick around to finish it, and maybe we'll be surprised by freelance work, but... :/