[UPDATED] Sony Worldwide Studios President also denies ‘The Last Guardian’ cancellation
UPDATED: Gamestop has issued the following statement regarding the cancellation calls and removal of The Last Guardian:
“The Last Guardian has not been cancelled by Sony as we incorrectly stated in an automated call to reservation customers. Because the game did not have a specific release date, GameStop made the decision to remove the game from our system. The Last Guardian will be reinstated for pre-order when a firm launch date is known.”
Our two cents: Someone made a serious mistake. Gamestop frequently lists upcoming games and hardware with placeholder dates when a release date is not known, and this explanation doesn’t ring true for us.
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If recent events that have unfolded around Team ICO’s troubled The Last Guardian are any indication, Gamestop is in serious trouble. Following the removal of the title from Gamestop’s database and in-store computers, as well as automated phone calls to pre-order customers informing them that the game had ceased production, a denial popped up from Patrick Seybold (Sony’s director of corporate communications). But now, Shuhei Yoshida has denied the rumor, and he’s the president of Sony’s Worldwide Studios.
Guiseppe Nelva of DualShockers decided to put the question directly to Mr. Yoshida on Twitter, and the response given was direct:
@yosp Gamestop is saying that The Last Guardian is canceled, any chance you can confirm or deny this rumor, please? Thank you.
@Abriael deny.”
Yoshida has been active on Twitter today, doing damage control with other concerned gamers as well, repeating that “The rumor is false” and “No it has not” been canceled.
The only explanation remaining is that a serious misunderstanding has occurred between Gamestop corporate and someone at Sony. We are still awaiting an official response from Gamestop, and will keep you posted as this story develops.
For now, can we breathe a sigh of relief?
[via DualShockers]
There’s more going on here than we know– and probably will EVER know.
As convenient as it is for Sony to throw GameStop under the bus, anyone who has ever worked for the retailer knows that cancellation procedures like this are rare and that the decision to go through with them is not one that’s casually made. We’re talking pre-order refunds here– loss of revenue. GameStop MUST have either received information pointing to the cancellation or heard something from someone at Sony.
It’s also a perfect cover if Sony messed up its lines of communication because GameStop is already perceived as an evil entity by core gamers; the retailer is judged guilty immediately and Sony gets off with a sigh of relief until it can sort out where to go from here.
Patrick Seybold (via Twitter @seybold) posted this:
“it was an innocent clerical error and they fixed it. no biggie..shows people are still excited about the game!”
Innocent clerical errors usually don’t result in mass phone calls and preorder refunds.
Just saying.
Quite right, and I’m pretty sure you and I have that certain retail background to stand by that position. Serious communication error somewhere. I highly doubt a database entry can be deleted via a simple clerical error.
Sony is covering up a mistake, not gamestop.