The Last Guardian Message Board

In a press conference unsurprisingly targeted at a Japanese audience, Sony’s Tokyo Game Show press conference didn’t feature much in the way of major new announcements (for us).

No, there was nothing new about The Last Guardian.

Confirming rumors, the company revealed a third iteration of PlayStation 3, a new model that goes on sale September 25 (yes, next week) over here for $269.99. It’s a 50% size reduction over the original PS3, 25% over the already skinny PS3 Slim, and the hard drive’s upgraded to 250GB and 500GB. The 250GB model goes on sale September 25 with a copy of Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception and other digital goodies. The 500GB model arrives October 30 with Assassin’s Creed III.

For the record, my Xbox 360 (a launch model) still has a 20GB hard drive. I’m cheap and sad.

The increasingly attractive PlayStation Plus service is also coming to Vita, and won’t cost anything to existing subscribers on PS3. According to the PlayStation Blog, that rolls out in November, and includes access to unspecified free games, an additional 1GB of cloud storage, discounts on games and downloable content, automatic updates ala PS3, and automatic trophy syncing. The last two are a complete joke for a premium service, by the way.

The recent acquisition of cloud gaming platform Gaikai was mentioned, but it wasn’t clear when any new features would be rolled out for PS3, Vita, or if it’s being saved for an unannounced platform.

New Vita models--Blue, Red--were announced, but no word on a price drop.

Keiji Inafune’s Soul Sacrifice was shown, though it was also delayed until next spring. Muramasa: The Demon Blade is getting a Vita port. Namco Bandai also announced a sequel to its Monster Hunter-esque God Eater series.

(Thanks to Twitter user @Cheesemeister3k for the excellent translation of the event.)

Getting an update on The Last Guardian at E3 this year seemed like a long shot, and the seemingly troubled Team Ico project was ultimately nowhere to be seen.

I chatted with the head of PlayStation worldwide development Shuhei Yoshida this afternoon, who remained coy on the game's status.

"Yeah, yeah," he said. "We have the team working hard, and still it's not the right time to give people an update."

Team Ico's creative leader, Fumito Ueda, left Sony earlier this year, but is reportedly still working with Sony to finish development on The Last Guardian. There have been no updates since Ueda left, leaving fans worried.

Yoshida assured me it absolutely was a project Sony intended to release eventually, though.

"It has to!" he laughed. "It will be."

Until then, we wait.