The announcement of Ninja Gaiden 4 during last week’s Xbox Developer Direct was a standout moment of the show. This unexpected collaboration between Team Ninja, the original developer of the series, and PlatinumGames, known for their expertise in spectacle fighters, was made even more exciting by Xbox’s surprise release of a modern remaster of Ninja Gaiden 2.
Bringing together two renowned teams from different sides of the action game genre was no easy feat, but it was Xbox head Phil Spencer who made it possible.
In a Game Watch interview with Tea Ninja producer Fumihiko Yasuda, it was revealed that the studio had been struggling to devise a plan to revive Ninja Gaiden in a significant way and create a new game in the series. It was only after meeting with Phil Spencer that the ideas started flowing. Spencer proposed bringing together Team Ninja, Koei Tecmo, and PlatinumGames for the next installment of Ninja Gaiden.
Prior to this, Koei Tecmo president Hisashi Koinuma and PlatinumGames president Atsushi Inaba had discussed the possibility of a collaboration, but it was Spencer who ultimately facilitated the partnership.
“We have developed action games ourselves, but as we were about to launch Ninja Gaiden for the first time in over a decade, PlatinumGames has previously created a variety of fantastic action titles, such as Bayonetta, and NieR: Automata, so we were keen to work with them, and that’s how we began our collaboration,” Yasuda added (machine translated).
PlatinumGames has a track record of producing exceptional titles based on other studios’ franchises. Games like Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and NieR: Automata are prime examples of their work, giving hope that Ninja Gaiden 4 will also be a standout action game. The reveal of the collaboration certainly generated a lot of excitement.
Ninja Gaiden 4 is set to release this fall on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
