GOONL!NE

Team ICO.

They are probably rated as one of the best rated 1st part developers inside Sony alongside Naughty Dog and Insomniac.

They made two of the greatest games ever released with ICO and Shadow of the Colossus for the PlayStation 2 with both of them possibly being two of the finest games ever made.

But now that PLAYSTATION 3 is nearing the two year mark in North America, we’ve had nothing from them. Naughty Dog has already released one game for the PS3, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, and are getting ready to start on another one while Insomniac are working on their 3rd (!) PS3 game with Resistance 2 (4th if you include Ratchet & Clank: Quest for Booty)

But yet, Team ICO have had nothing to show so far of their talents so far except one concept art screen which is at the top of the story.

But is Shuhei Yoshida, the new head of Sony’s Worldwide Studios, giving us the biggest hint as to what to expect? In an interview in OPM UK, Yoshida stated what Team ICO were doing right now and it’s “Really, Really Good”

Hit the jump for the full quote.

“They are working on a title. I started the ICO project. Ueda-san joined my team in Japan as a cinematic animator, but he created a short movie and presented it to me and said, “I want to make this game.”

I said, “Yes, let’s do it, but you have never made a game. We have to have experienced people do it,” so it took a while, recruiting one person at a time. And because Fumito Ueda doesn’t compromise, we had to move the development from PSone to PlayStation 2. Then I couldn’t complete the game because I moved to the United States.

It took four years and the second game took four years too. So I started calling them the ‘Olympic Team.’ They haven’t released a PS3 title yet – of course not – they’ll take four years! But they have something really, really good on the way.”

Now, of course, naturally exec’s are naturally obligated to say stuff like this for their games to hype the game to get more console sells. BUT…he does have experience in Team ICO and considering how great ICO and Shadow of the Colossus was, we can expect nothing but pure greatness from them once again.

And like Yoshida said, it’s every 4 years we get a new game from Team ICO (Like the Olympics, the World Cup and a new Daft Punk album) and last time we checked, ICO was released in 2001, Shadow of the Colossus in 2005…could the new game be out as early as next year? Well, first off they need to show some footage of it but a safe bet would be Games Convention at the end of the month as we are promised a couple of bombshells there but if not, Tokyo Games Show would be a great place.

We can only hope.

Sony’s Yoshida: Team Ico Has Something “Really, Really Good on the Way” [Endsights]

Official PlayStation Magazine UK is out this Thursday but is available now to Subcribers