Join The Club
Technically Fumito Ueda, the director of critically acclaimed adventures Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian, has released a game on the PC. His first credits, from a year-and-a-half working as an animator at Kenji Eno's studio Warp, are on horror adventures D and Enemy Zero, which both got '90s MS-DOS releases. Once Ueda joined Sony and began designing his own games, however, he was dedicated to the PlayStation—a dedication that stuck through the end of 2016, with the release of The Last Guardian.
After partnering with Epic Games, Ueda's next project, the still mysterious Gen Atlas, will be the first he's directed to come to PC. We spoke at length about the game itself, including the prospect of getting his work in front of a new audience.
"I have nothing but excitement and am happy that this can reach a lot more players just from day one," Ueda said. "I'm looking forward to it as much as I think new players are looking forward to experiencing a Fumito Ueda game."
But I couldn't let the opportunity pass by without asking about the games he spent more than 15 years of his career developing. Would he like to see those games available to the same PC audience as well?
"Yeah, if there is [such] an opportunity, I think it's only good news for the games," Ueda responded via an interpreter.
I framed the question with the acknowledgement that the decision to port Ico, Shadow of the Colossus and The Last Guardian to PC isn't entirely up to Ueda. The first two were wholly created while he was a Sony employee; while he went independent during the development of The Last Guardian to found his own studio, Gen Design, Sony no doubt owns the rights to the game. And judging by Sony's recent pivot, it seems unlikely that porting its back catalog of games to PC is currently on the agenda.
Still, I told Ueda that I hope it happens someday.
"I hope so too," he said.
