Team Ico‘s Project Trico recently – I mean that in no sense of the word - received a name face lift, and here’s the reasons as to why. According to Kotaku, Yasuhide Kobayashi, SCEE senior vice president, stated that The Last Guardian (Project Trico) was given a English title so that it would appeal more to the US and European markets.

“There are so many issues we have to solve, and the biggest challenge is that the market in Japan is shrinking — they key is gaining success in the US and Europe,” stated the exec. “At the time of the original PlayStation the Japanese market was one third of the global market, and production costs weren’t that high — so we were able to generate profit from that market alone.”

“But now we’re in the era of the PlayStation 3, and the Japanese market is only one fifth of the global market — when it comes to production costs, those are swelling, so it means that unless we gain success in the overseas market our studio will go bankrupt,” said Kobayashi. “It’s a crisis we recognize.”