Ninja Gaiden’s Itagaki has a new studio and would be ‘honoured’ to work with Xbox

Ninja Gaiden director Tomonobu Itagaki has returned to sport growth with a newly-formed studio, he’s revealed.

In a submit printed on his Facebook web page, the designer revealed he’s established Itagaki Video games, a brand new studio unrelated to his former employers Tecmo and Valhalla.

“For the previous 4 years, I’ve been instructing job to foster juniors, however now I really feel like I need to make a sport once more and simply established an organization for that goal,” he wrote.

The 53-year-old designer and his Ninja Gaiden staff had been behind Tecmo’s greatest video games for practically 20 years, together with the Lifeless or Alive collection and the Xbox reboot of Ninja Gaiden.

Nevertheless, Itagaki had a very public falling out with his employer following the discharge of Ninja Gaiden II in 2008, which noticed him depart the corporate and file a $1 million lawsuit alleging unpaid bonuses and “disingenuous statements”.

After the break up, Itagaki based Valhalla Recreation Studios, the developer behind the critically-panned Wii U title Satan’s Third. In 2017, he resigned from his director place and took on an advisory function.

Satan’s Third was a uncommon deviation from Xbox platforms for Itagaki, however even that sport was originally intended to be an Xbox 360 exclusive, in response to the designer, with Microsoft mentioned to have partially funded the formation of Valhalla. Because of the firm’s shift to give attention to Kinect, Satan’s Third ultimately switched to THQ (and later, Nintendo).

Due to authentic Xbox hits Lifeless or Alive 3 and Ninja Gaiden, Itagaki stays a key determine within the historical past of the platform and just lately contributed to a Bloomberg feature marking Xbox’s 20^th anniversary.

Itagaki’s Facebook feedback got here from an unedited interview he initially submitted for the characteristic, which the designer mentioned he wouldn’t have contributed if weren’t for the big variety of Xbox followers anticipating his subsequent sport.

Requested if he would think about working with Microsoft once more sooner or later, Itagaki mentioned he’d be “honoured” to hitch up along with his previous accomplice.

“I’d begin once more with questions that I made to [original Xbox designer] Seamus [Blackley] 20 years in the past,” he wrote. “Again then, I requested him, ‘are you assured that you’ll beat PS2?’ and he mentioned, ‘Sure. Xbox is known as Mission Halfway and I’ll achieve the supremacy with it.’

“That’s why I trusted him and really created Xbox-exclusive video games for about ten years. 20 years have handed since then, and I established my very own firm, Itagaki Video games, which isn’t Tecmo, nor Valhalla. I do know Microsoft remains to be aggressive. In the event that they attain out to me, will probably be an honor for me.”

Xbox has overtly expressed a need to amass an Asian sport developer, “particularly a Japanese studio”, on multiple occasions.

Based on a November 2020 Bloomberg report, Xbox is continuing discussions with Japanese game developers ‘large and small’ because it continues its seek for studio acquisitions within the nation, with a number of Japanese corporations privately indicating that that they had been approached by Microsoft about shopping for their companies.

Microsoft is making renewed efforts in Japan with its newest console launch. Xbox Series X and S launched day-and-date with different territories on November 10 (in comparison with a 12 months later with its earlier console) and Xbox boss Phil Spencer has mentioned it intends to better cater to Japanese players this console technology.