Pre-order for The Last Guardian exceed Sony’s expectations

PS4 exclusive The Last Guardian will be hitting shelves next week and, despite being in development for nearly ten years, there’s still a sizeable fan base eagerly waiting for its launch, Sony’s product manager Joe Palmer told MCV.

I can’t comment with specific details, but I can say that pre-orders for The Last Guardian are exceeding expectations,” he said. We’ve seen a really positive response to the Collector’s Edition in particular, which despite its higher price point proves there’s a huge appetite for the game.”

Japanese developer Fumito Ueda and his team started working on the spiritual successor to Ico and Shadow of the Colossus in 2007, with an official reveal being made at E3 2009 and a 2011 release date scheduled.The title disappeared from public view before it opened Sony’s E3 2015 conference. The game is now set for a December 9th release date.

With such a long development cycle, fulfilling players’ hopes is obviously a big concern for Sony – although the team has tried not to pay too much attention to the hype surrounding the title.

When you’re working on a game that has such incredibly high levels of expectation, it’s impossible not to consider the pressure of meeting player expectations,” Palmer added. We’ve tried to avoid fuelling the hype by playing on the fact that people have been waiting a long time for this. We want people to be excited because the game looks incredible, not because of its complicated development story.”

You can read more from Joe Palmer on The Last Guardian in MCV’s December 9th issue