[Update#2] Gamasutra has just received confirmation from Sony that Mr. Ueda has in fact left the company but will stick around on a contract basis to finish The Last Guardian. Even though most people have believed this rumor to be true for a long time, it's still sad to get confirmation that Team ICO has lost one of it's top developers.

[Update] There still has been no reaction either from Sony nor from Mr. Ueda himself, but at least he took the time to tweet that he is, in fact, still working on The Last Guardian. The Tweet translates as follows: "Since I've got a lot of enquiries...The Last Guardian is still in eager development, so don't worry." The fact that he hasn't reacted to the rumors however is less reassuring. I'll keep an eye on his account and will post updates if anything changes.

Somebody apparently set the rumor mill to overdrive today. The next piece of alleged information it has churned out concerns the long-awaited The Last Guardian, which has been in development for a good 4 years now. According to Eurogamer, the designer and director of the game (as well as the quasi-prequels Ico and Shadow of the Colossus) Fumito Ueda has left Team Ico for hitherto undisclosed reasons.

If the rumor is to be believed however, we don't have to worry about The Last Guardian as he will go on to finish the game in a freelance capacity before embarking on personal projects. Ueda's departure is also cited as the reason for the game's prolonged development cycle. Sony however denied to comment.

I really hope this rumor doesn't turn out to be true, as Team Ico would lose a lot with Ueda's departure. On the other hand, I am pretty curious to see what those "personal projects" of him will look like...although I wonder if he couldn't just have realized them with Team Ico. Oh well, we'll have to wait and see.