Sony Senior VP Shuhei Yoshida has confirmed to Wired that Sony Santa Monica team members are contributing to The Last Guardian -- along with a few more. "Well, you know, it's not just Santa Monica," he says. "We have great tech people in Worldwide Studios. We have a central tech group in the U.S. and the U.K. so we are giving them whatever help they need. Technically, we have the best engineers in the U.S. and Europe, so these teams are helping them, giving advice."

Progress on The Last Guardian may be slow right now, but Yoshida assures us the game is still coming. The departure of Fumito Ueda was exaggerated, he says, as the famed designer is still going to finish The Last Guardian on contract with Sony.

"At one point the progress was great, so we talked about the timing of the launch in the past. But now it's making progress, but still not to the level -- it's playable, but not to the point that we can talk about the timing of launch." But now, "the progress is slow," he says, and "sometimes the team has to go back and review things."

The Last Guardian is still planned for 2012, but there seems to be little certainty over that time frame. "There's a vision that we want to realize but it's very very tough and technical issue that the team is tackling and some plans have to be made to evaluate and go through the process," Yoshida says.