Tomonobu Itagaki Announces His Return with Itagaki Games

Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive’s Producer and Director, Tomonobu Itagaki has announced his return to the video games industry with a newly founded studio called Itagaki Games.

He made the announcement of his new company on a Facebook post, following a recent Bloomberg interview where he discussed working with Microsoft as the next step in his career. He also explained how he has been busy teaching the next generation of developers for the better part of the last four years.

Itagaki affirms that he and the Xbox Series X|S can beat the competition, and for that, he would be honored.

Haha, I would start again with questions that I made to Seamus [Seamus Blackley] two decades ago. Back then, I asked him, are you confident that you will beat PS2? He said yes. Xbox is called ‘Project Midway’ and I’ll gain the supremacy with it. That’s why I trusted him and actually created Xbox-exclusive games for about 10 years. 20 years have passed since then, and I established my own company, Itagaki Games, which is not Tecmo, nor Valhalla. I know Microsoft is still aggressive. If they reach out to me, it will be an honor for me.”

Itagaki is a veteran in the video games industry, he worked for Tecmo’s biggest projects for nearly two decades, he also produced the reboot of Ninja Gaiden for Xbox. Itagaki had an unfortunate problem with the directive at Tecmo and he announced his departure from the company due to a lawsuit to Yoshimi Yasuda (President of Tecmo) for damages based on “unreasonable and disingenuous statements” made in front of Itagaki’s colleagues.

Itagaki later founded Valhalla Game Studios, and in 2015 the studio launched the poorly-received Devil’s Third.

Itagaki Games will have the experience of a veteran who worked for the Xbox 360 exclusive Dead or Alive 4, Xbox 360 exclusive Dead or Alive Xtreme 2, and 2008 Xbox 360 exclusive Ninja Gaiden 2.

Source: Facebook

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