Ninja Gaiden’s Itagaki owns a new studio and will be „honored“ to work with Xbox

Ninja Gaiden director Tomonobu Itagaki is back in developing the game with a newly formed studio, he revealed.

In a post published on his site The social networking site Facebook Page, the designer revealed that he founded Itagaki Games, a new studio that has nothing to do with his former employers Tecmo and Valhalla.

He wrote, „For the past four years, I’ve been teaching a job to sponsor juniors, but now I feel like I want to make a game again and just set up a company for that.“

The 53-year-old designer and team Ninja Gaiden have been behind Tecmo’s biggest games for nearly two decades, including the Dead or Alive series and the X-Box Ninja Gaiden restart.

However, it was itagaki Very public disagreement with the employer After releasing Ninja Gaiden II in 2008, he left the company and files a million-dollar lawsuit alleging unpaid bonuses and „disingenuous remarks“.

After the split, Itagaki founded Valhalla Game Studios, the developer behind the critics‘ criticism Wii U Title Devil’s Third. In 2017, he resigned from the director position and took an advisory role.

Devil’s Third was a rare deviation from Itagaki’s Xbox consoles, but even this game was It was originally intended to be an Xbox 360 exclusiveAccording to the designer with Microsoft He is said to have partially funded the Valhalla formation. Due to the company’s shift to focus on Kinect, Devil’s Third eventually switched to THQ (and later, Nintendo).

Thanks to the Xbox original games Dead or Alive 3 and Ninja Gaiden, Itagaki remains a major character in the platform’s history and has recently contributed to One of the Bloomberg features that differentiate Xbox’s 20^{The tenth} Anniversary.

Itagaki The social networking site Facebook Comments came from an unedited interview he originally provided for the feature, which the designer said he wouldn’t have contributed had it not been for the large number of Xbox fans anticipating his next game.

When asked if he would consider working with Microsoft again in the future, Itagaki said he would be „honored“ by joining his longtime partner.

„I’ll start over with the questions that I asked her [original Xbox designer] CMOS [Blackley] Two decades ago, ”he wrote. I asked him at the time,“ Are you sure you’ll defeat PS2? ”And he said,“ Yes. Xbox is called Project Midway and I’m going to gain supremacy with it. ”

„That’s why I trusted him and created Xbox exclusive games for nearly ten years. It’s been 20 years since then, and I have created my own company, Itagaki Games, which is neither Tecmo nor Valhalla. I know Microsoft is still aggressive. If they reach out to me, that would be an honor. Mine „.

Xbox has openly expressed its desire for an Asian game developer, „in particular a Japanese studio,“ On multiple occasions.

According to Bloomberg’s November 2020 report, Xbox continues discussions with Japanese game developers „Big and Small“ as she continues to search for a studio acquisition in the country, with several Japanese companies in particular indicating that Microsoft has approached them about purchasing their business.

Microsoft is making renewed efforts in Japan with its recent console release. Xbox X Series The S launched Day and Date with other regions on November 10 (compared to a year later with the previous console) and the Xbox Prime Phil Spencer He said Intends to better meet the needs of Japanese players This generation console.