And some bits about PS4 in Japan

Not really surprising the info on the game's cost, dunno why people keep thinking it must have become a money sink.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-06-26-shuhei-yoshida-on-saving-the-last-guardian-and-ps4-in-japan

But many other questions remained. A few days later in a quiet hotel suite, I got the chance to put some of them to a relaxed Yoshida, whom I found every bit as affable and enthusiastic as his reputation and Twitter persona would lead you to believe. He laid the blame for The Last Guardian's lengthy delay entirely at his own door, or rather the door of the Sony engineers who couldn't get it running to their satisfaction on PS3 (although it's worth noting that the game's director Fumito Ueda, now working on it as an independent contractor, characterised the delay as "a corporate decision" in a recent Game Informer interview). Yoshida confirmed that PS4 architect and Knack director Mark Cerny had contributed to the game's PS4 retooling, but described rumours that he had been parachuted in to replace Ueda and "save" the project as "totally bogus". He claimed that the game's budget remains relatively modest, despite the epic length of its production, and said that, its tortuous development notwithstanding, he would be keen to work with Ueda again.

It's been in development for a very, very long time. It must be a considerable investment... is it one of the most expensive games you've ever developed?

No, no, not at all. The team is much smaller. Teams in Japan are much smaller in general than teams in the US and Europe... Horizon is a much bigger budget title than The Last Guardian! It's not so small, it's much bigger than Ico or Shadow of the Colossus, but it's not a US or European-style budget.

Would you be interested in working with Ueda-san again, after The Last Guardian?

[Nods vigorously] Everyone would! But we have to finish this first!

Is reclaiming Japanese gamers a focus for you?

Yes, yes... so PS4 has amazing sales, it's selling very well outside Japan because there are amazing games made from outside Japan. It's only this year that, with Dragon Quest Heroes and Bloodborne and Final Fantasy Type 0 and Yakuza, Japanese publishers finally started to make games on PS4 and PS4 is showing some upward swing in Japan. So definitely, Final Fantasy 7 and 15 and Dragon Quest Heroes 2, these games will help.

Why not just buy them? They're a brand new studio so they should be cheap.

No need to buy. Team ICO was an incredibly small team in Japan studio. Plus Sony has more than enough talented first party studios.

Because Ueda wanted more freedom and that'd defeat the purpose, they want to remain independent.

I think they left Sony and founded their own studio to be independent from them, not to be just outright bought by Sony again. :D

OT: That's good about the budget, that it's still lower than Horizon, cause it's going to sell a lot less than that as well.

And regarding Japan we all know that they need DQ XI (and giving a certain someone a job wouldn't hurt either. ;))

Good guy Sony. How can you not like Shu ?

Has the design of the game evolved over the last four years, or has it just been waiting for the tech to catch up?

So, Ueda-san, his style of development is very set out, clear, like a vision, at the beginning of the project. It was the case for Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. Because he is an artist, he creates a short video to show to the team members, this is what we make. So the vision is totally the same. Because of the technical difficulty, running the game at the frame-rate required that the team look to compromise some features - the number of characters that Ueda-san wanted to do - if we were to continue on PS3. But because we moved to PS4, now he can make what he wanted. So people say it looks like the same game - there's a reason!

Hehe, sounds like there are a couple people locked in a room somewhere and Ueda drops in now and then to check if they've got his vision working yet. Time for Mark Cerny to make another visit for some more advice, keep working at it. No compromises!

Sshh they're shady and Shenmue 3 ;)

Ueda says it was a corporate decision for the delay and that there were moments where he thought the game would never come out. What the hell happened?

So basically we still don't know why the game has taken so long but the budget has not blown out of control like most would have expected. Good news, I guess...