http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-last-guardian-trademark-abandoned/1100-6425336/
Sony Computer Entertainment America’s trademark for The Last Guardian has been abandoned, according to its status page on the United States Patent and Trademark Office (via All Games Beta.)
The abandonment occurred because “no Statement of Use or Extension Request” was filed after a “Notice of Allowance” was issued. As a result, the trademark was abandoned today. GameSpot has reached out to Sony for comment and will provide an update when one has been received.
Not good news at all.
If The Last Guardian is cancelled that will all but kill my interest in this generation of consoles.
I’d be pretty disappointed as well… But maybe they’ve just changed the name.
As someone on the NeoGAF boards said, that boy in The Last Guardian is so old now that he no longer needs a legal guardian. It is good to have a sense of humour in such dark times.
I found out some good news, however. Some former Last Guardian team members are working on another game which features a similar visual style to The Last Guardian. It’s called Vane, and is being self funded and developed for PC.
http://www.friendandfoegames.com/vane/
Hmmm, well who knows still, it’s been a very odd situation for a long time now and I think I have been emotionally well resigned to the possibility for a few years anyway. People don’t keep pure enthusiasm for something going through eight years of development hell though.
At one time I remember wondering if the game Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom was doing something too close to Last Guardian’s concept and they were rattled by it? Also even though no one dared to suggest it openly, I had to wonder how much those technical issues were directly concerned with the PS3 being so underperforming in areas that the PS2 was relatively strong, I have the impression that Japanese devs liked wrestling with that hardware even less than western devs overall.
If it got shifted completely to PS4 that could have been a good thing, but that was never even confirmed which was always sort of cagey and weird to me. But Sony has also shifted to an even more western focused attitude internally, it’s still running in the red and it knows it doesn’t even have to do anything special to own Japan, or at least share what’s left of the console market with Nintendo. It’s possible Gran Turismo is still the only IP thst has ever been directly profitable for them, outside of Naughty Dog’s games and perhaps God of War and Ratchet and Clank. But in all the love heaped on Sony lately for supposedly not sucking as hard as M$, it’s easy to miss all the indicators that this is not the same operation it once was, both for better and for worse.
Anyway I made my peace with Last Guardian a while back, if it somwhow still makes it through with grace then it’ll be a marvelous surprise. 
Was the trademark ever renewed?
The picture in the article I linked shows that it was extended a few times.
It’s still in development, according to Sony. But no explanation as to why the trademark has not been renewed.
Apparently some kind of administrative error on Sony’s part. Smooth!
Ha. Well, I’m glad they’re keeping the name. If indeed The Last Guardian takes place in the same world as Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, the creature may be intended to be a Colossi of sorts.
Semi-related: I was looking at the Team Ico Wiki on Wikia. It’s a lot more developed than when I last checked - 149 articles! I sense some light reading coming up. I’ve always felt that the web lacked a solid Team Ico fan website, so perhaps the Wikia page will be it.
It’s a shame that the Panzer Dragoon wikia site never took off, but I guess we don’t need it with TWOTA’s encyclopaedia.
