The Last Guardian is suppose to launch on PS4 sometime in 2016 and was not suppose to take this long, at least not according to game director Fumito Ueda. In a developer diary video with IGN, Ueda goes into depth on the creation of The Last Guardian, transitioning development to PS4, and meeting the 2016 release deadline.
“We weren’t always in active development so it’s really difficult to provide an accurate number in terms of the development period, but one thing I can say is that we thought that it was going to be shorter, or we thought that Ico and Shadow of the Colossus took a long time to develop, so one of of the missions of The Last Guardian was that we wanted to create something good in a short period of time, so the fact that it took a long time to develop was completely unexpected for me.”
The Last Guardian was slated to release on PS3, and although Ueda was not too thrilled about transitioning to the PS4, it is a known fact that doing so has led to many improvements to the game overall. Better frame rate, graphics, and game play mechanics have all helped change Ueda’s opinion of moving development to PS4.