There’s been some serious reports of upset after gaming retail chain GameStop removed Sony’s upcoming PS3 title The Last Guardian and subsequently started contact customers who had the game reserved informing them that the game had been cancelled and recommending they “shift their reserve credits to another coming soon title.”
The automated phone call went out yesterday declaring the cancellation of Team Ico’s highly-anticipated PlayStation 3 exclusive and after the gaming world went bats over the news, GameStop later apologized for the mistake.
As of now GameStop the game has been removed from the company’s website and there has been confirmations at a couple of retail locations that it’s no longer in their point-of-sale system either. GameStop sent Kotaku the following statement regarding the suggested cancellation of The Last Guardian: “The Last Guardian has not been cancelled by Sony as we incorrectly stated in an automated call to reservation customers. Because the game did not have a specific release date, GameStop made the decision to remove the game from our system. The Last Guardian will be reinstated for pre-order when a firm launch date is known.”
There’s speculation as to why this came about in the first place. The title, being “TBA” status since it was announced at E3 of 2009, hasn’t had any movement on a release date since its announcement. Combine that with the recent news of shakeups within the production team which include creator Fumito Ueda recently leaving his position at the head of Sony’s Team Ico more than a few flags were quickly raised. With the reports of his leaving the company, there were tons of affirmations that the move would in no way affect the development of the game itself.
Patrick Seybold, Sony’s senior director of corporate communications, has spoken up saying the cancellation is not a real thing the game is still in development. Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida also denied the talk on Twitter.
For the moment, there’s nothing to worry about and Sony still has firm plans on keeping the title active. We’ll keep you up to date as more information surrounding The Last Guardian comes to us.
