Confirmed: The Last Guardian and ICO HD remixes all slip

Sadly, the news can't all be about Portal 2 releasing early and Bethesda's Skyrim. No, some days the news is bad.

European product manager Phil Lynch broke the news on the PlayStation blog.

"SCEE can confirm that we are officially delaying the release of ICO/Shadow of the Colossus Collection and The Last Guardian from their respective launch timeframes of Spring 2011 and Holiday/Winter 2011. We will provide more information regarding release timing at a later date."

Given the original launch windows, it's possible that Ico and SotC may still make it before Christmas, but that looks unlikely for new title, The Last Guardian, which may now be pushed back to 2012.

Team Ico head Fumito Ueda posted an apology alongside the announcement:

"I announced at last year's Tokyo Game Show that the release timing of The Last Guardian which is currently being developed would be holiday 2011.

"However, to provide more challenging and better quality of content to users and to fulfill First Party Studio's obligations, I decided to postpone its release timing.

"All the members of my production team are working together at a fast pace to develop and release the game in First Party Studio quality.

"I sincerely apologize to all the customers who have been waiting for "The Last Guardian" for so long, but I beg for your patience. I will also announce the new release timing at a later time."

If there's a silver lining for those that are disappointed by this news, it's that moving The Last Guardian out of the busy Christmas launch window may give it more room to shine and reduce the risk of it being overlooked. Then again, it might just mean it misses out on important 'holiday season' sales.

Thanks, Syrok.