There was a time splitters from a big company could make good games, but the prospects lately are a bit hazey.

Ninja Gaidens are great,,,
but DoA is no Tekken.

i dont know..
this guy is always talking too much crap.

and whats with all those razor bumps?
cant he CG that shiet?

Somebody sponsor this guy, he knows how to celebrate the pure fun of games.

There's plenty of other companies that will be happy to scoop him up.

I agree with ichigo style. i love mgs and im going to wait in a line to get a signature off hideo but it is a good ripoff from a few stuff. not the game but from movies. itagaki is pretty original. and to foxhound, please the ninja gaiden series is so old that it pretty much added loads to the industry. correct me if im wrong but isn't ninja gaiden nes the first game with cutscenes? also its a ninja in a modern world setting. and if it has been copied that means its a successful formula. mgs hasn't been copied as much because it doesnt sell that much as you would think.


on the matter at hand. itagaki is a major guy in tecmo, and I dont see what tecmo has to show now. they do have team ninja so i guess they are safe. I would love itagaki to work at platinum games but i think his ego would be to big. but think of the game that would come out of that team:O

well that fucking sucks

the DOA series is a guilty pleasure of mine for obvious reasons

Wow you guys act like NG2 doesnt look like devil may cry 4, please if you talk about originality, you cant do that when speaking of sequels! and these games are the only ones he can make. same with the MGS guys.

Devil may cry team kills the ninja team hands down, what game has smoother gameplay than that or more graphically aweing scenes, i can pick a few trailers for PC GAMES, but none for consoles.

Get over it, its time for new games to invade our brains. The ninja is so over played, and that really real for cereal!

Go buy Braid and then try saying other video games are hard, thank you

A first I thought "Maybe he really is full of himself" but hearing what the president said I think that was the right decision.

I'm so sick of this "Itagaki is an asshole" shit. Like Goggles said, he has the same ego as everyone else, he's just straightforward about it and embellishes it instead of being all sly and underhanded. I think he's great entertainment.

Say what you will about ninja and the action genre but he always strived for perfection that has only been reached by few other games such as God of War or Smash Bros Melee. The kind of game that is almost perfect technically, with the least about of problems/glitches.

Another criteria I use is how restrictive the game is. When I mess up in a game I blame something (you know you've done it) but at times it really is the games fault. The controls, a glitch, whatever. Games like Ninja Gaiden are one of the few that, when I die, all I have to say is "It's because I suck." Not because the screen froze (Rock Band) or the game is just a clusterfuck of who can shoot first (Halo) or because someone had host advantage (Gears) or because they're programmed by a bunch of kids with a handful of code and a lot of duct tape (GTA).

They're all still good games, they're just not up to that standard.

The President sounds like a douchebag. While I am not much of a fan of his - I can understand the douchebaggery of a self-driven ego authority.

I think that it's good that he's moving on. But as someone who couldn't find much enjoyable in the way of the Dead Or Alive franchise, and whoms appeal to Ninja Gaiden has died from the days of old. Maybe this is all for the better that these projects will be dead. Perhaps with this he can get to cracking on something wholely new.

Leaving the mans personal "touch" out of it, alongside interviews and everything. I just feel that as time has gone through, the Dead Or Alive franchise just became a joke with whats the best way to throw T&A out there. And the Ninja Gaiden series becoming so extremely overhyped for something it did not. I enjoyed the Xbox release of Ninja Gaiden. But I fail to be impressed by Ninja Gaiden 2. It seems uninspired and empty. It seems like it was made only so one could receive money. It seems like not much of anything was improved in this one except for the resolution and a few more shiny stuff and things like dismemberment.

That being said. My opinion of Itagaki has long been toward the bottom of the barrel. He has the kind of attitude that I would not like to hire into a workforce, had I been the CEO of some company. His games were once great, and have continued to diminish as the years went by. Perhaps this leave will get him to form his own studio and perhaps have a greater look at his developments, and perhaps he will bring back a genius in games and renew my vision in him. I sincerely hope that he does.

The media industry pretty much loves anyone who acts like that. You need to be able to sell yourself and convince people you have the greatest idea in the world. Modesty gets you nowhere in that world.

Ninja Gaiden is great. DMC 4 was a repetitive piece of work - Dice room, fighting bosses several times - no thanks. Lets not forget God of War with its Kratos is pissed, follows some gods instructions, dies, escapes Hades, fights the final boss formula that was followed for all 3 games.

@Rosseh - yea its not like DMC 3 wasn't made to counter Ninja Gaiden 1 or anything you know with the whole difficulty spin and updated graphics right? Right?

Itagaki'll be fine. I'm sure there's a few north american companies who wouldn't mind having his vision on an IP or two.