Reports that Ninja Gaiden II will be the last game in the series have been more or less confirmed by Tomonobu Itagaki. In an interview with CVG, he claimed that both he and his closest colleagues have decided that there really isn’t anything more to do on either front, and that he’s now looking to original, future products.
“I’ve done everything I wanted to accomplish with this franchise and all of my closest colleagues are satisfied and agree that we’ve done as much as we can with it,” he said in regards to Ninja Gaiden.
Itagaki had a similar response to a question regarding the future of Dead or Alive. He said, “This is another area that me and my closest colleagues all agree that we were able to achieve the definitive fighting game with DOA4. So we’re not looking to extend the series at this point.”
He didn’t seem to have any concrete ideas — or at least, none that he would share — for what his next game will be, other than a brand new action game that will definitely feature violence.
The topic of Ninja Gaiden Sigma also came up, which Itagaki described as being “no good.” He claimed that “[d]espite the fact that it’s on a ‘next-generation’ console there’s no evolution whatsoever,” and that it “was made not by me, but one of my sub-ordinates who basically tried to copy the success of Ninja Gaiden.”
As for the chances of Ninja Gaiden II ending up on PS3, Itagaki had some harsh words for the decision makers at Tecmo, saying that if the game ever did appear on PS3, “[I]t would be a loss of face for everyone involved.”
Ouch. I’m very disappointed we won’t be seeing any further Ninja Gaiden games — at least not from Itagaki — but perhaps moving on will let him accomplish things that he couldn’t within the constraints of a Ninja Gaiden game.
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- GDC 08: Ninja Gaiden 2 Coming on June 3
