Noticeably absent from Sony's press event yesterday was The Last Guardian. The game was first announced in 2009. Since then, fans have been waiting for the finished title to emerge. It hasn't.
Development has not exactly been smooth. The game's creator, Fumito Ueda, has left Sony, but is contracted out to finish this title. There's been talk about one of Sony's North American studios also working on the game. Amid speculation that the game had been shifted to the PS4, Sony's Shuhei Yoshida confirmed that the game was still being developed for the PS3.
Today at the Tokyo Game Show, a Japanese developer for Sony told Kotaku that work continues on the game—even if it's not at TGS. "I give you my word that it exists," said the developer, who wanted to be unnamed. "We are working on it."
The game, according to this developer, is still being developed in Japan. Fumito Ueda continues to work closely on the project (something Ueda confirmed to Kotaku this summer). But it's a "very ambitious project", the developer pointed out, adding that The Last Guardian was probably announced way too early.
According to the Sony developer, the logical explanation for why The Last Guardian isn't at TGS is that Sony seems to be pulling back recently, being more reluctant to talk about games until they are closer to launch.
"There are lots of pieces to the puzzle," said the developer. "It's a matter of getting them to fit together."