14 DAY TRIAL // Team Ninja is one of the most popular game development studios in Japan, largely because it launched some pretty appreciated titles like the Dead or Alive fighting series or Ninja Gaiden. Its former leader, Tomonobu Itagaki, gained a rock star-like reputation and was considered by many to be the driving force for Team Ninja and for its parent company, Tecmo.
His much publicized departure from the Team Ninja studio left many wondering how Tecmo would survive without his creativity and his valuable insight on the gaming market. But Tecmo wasn’t too affected by his departure, as soon after Itagaki’s move, it announced merging with Koei, another medium sized Japanese gaming company, in order to create a more powerful corporation.
The new leader of Team Ninja, Hitoshi Hasegawa, while not quite measuring up to the personality of Itagaki, has recently talked about the PlayStation 3. He considers the PS3 to be the most powerful console on the market and that it is a very attractive platform to develop on, but that most of the games launched for it haven’t exploited the full potential of Sony’s console.
“For the PlayStation 3, we do not believe that we've seen the fullest of its potential from any standpoint: from a developer standpoint, and also a consumer standpoint - and just in products in general. The developers have been releasing products, but there is a bigger potential. There is greater potential, and we see that possibility the most in the PlayStation 3. It's going to be up to us developers and Sony to make sure that that does happen. For any developer that's been working on all of the platforms that are available today, I think they would agree that the PlayStation 3 is the most powerful system out there.”
Some very interesting words which might hint to a port of previous Team Ninja titles, like Ninja Gaiden Sigma, to the PS3, as most of them were Xbox 360 exclusives. Only time will tell what console Team Ninja will develop for, but let’s just hope they will do a great job.