According to Joe Palmer, Sony Product Manager, the long wait for The Last Guardian and the commitment to refining gameplay will pay off in the long run.
Speaking to MCV, Palmer stated, "I can’t comment with specific details, but I can say that pre-orders for The Last Guardian are exceeding expectations. We’ve seen a really positive response to the Collector’s Edition in particular, which despite its higher price point, proves there’s a huge appetite for the game"
For those keeping track at home, the standard edition of The Last Guardian has a retail price of $50.99, while the Collector's Edition is over 2x that price at $119.99.
However, with respect to the potential of failing to deliver on an incredibly amount of hype (and perhaps in consideration of the recent No Man's Sky debacle), Palmer added, "When you’re working on a game that has such incredibly high levels of expectation, it’s impossible not to consider the pressure of meeting player expectations. We’ve tried to avoid fueling the hype by playing on the fact that people have been waiting a long time for this. We want people to be excited because the game looks incredible, not because of its complicated development story."
The Last Guardian has been in development since 2007 and was originally slated for release on the PlayStation 3.
ABOUT THE LAST GUARDIAN
The Last Guardian is an upcoming video game developed by genDESIGN and SIE Japan Studio, and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for the PlayStation 4. The game is designed and directed by Fumito Ueda, and shares stylistic, thematic, and gameplay elements with his previous games, Ico (2001) and Shadow of the Colossus (2005). In The Last Guardian, the player controls a young boy who befriends a giant half-bird-half-mammal creature, Trico, and the two work together to evade guards that are after them both. The player must manipulate Trico as they would a real animal, such as luring it with food, to use it to reach high platforms or other remote places, while evading enemies.
The single-player action-adventure game will be released in Japan and North America on December 6, 2016.