Two classic Team Ninja franchises could be receiving a new lease on life, according to a translated developer talk.
Reboots of both Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive are reportedly in the works, seemingly confirmed by Team Ninja's president at a panel at South Korea's G-Star conference this weekend. As reported by VGC (via Ruliweb), Fumihikio Yasuda didn't provide any details on either resurrection but essentially confirmed that they were happening.
The final slide of Yasuda's presentation at the event shows screenshots featuring Ryu and Kasumi respectively. In Japanese, the text reads: "The future of Team Ninja—reboot of popular series." The developer said that while he couldn't say much more than that, he hoped that more news could be shared "as soon as possible."
With Team Ninja having two games in the pipeline right now, there's a chance we won't hear anything for a while. Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is due out in 2023, while fellow action game Rise of the Ronin is slated for release in 2024. We haven't seen a Dead or Alive game since Dead or Alive 6 in 2019, with it being even longer since a brand-new Ninja Gaiden game. We did get the Ninja Gaiden Master Collection last year, but it was a barebones PC port.
Yasuda previously told VGC that he would like to work on a new Ninja Gaiden, but "all the pieces would need to fit, and it would need to be the right team… either a younger team internally or another company that would really need to fit the Ninja Gaiden pedigree." With the reboot news, rumours have begun circulating that Platinum (of Nier and Babylon's Fall fame) is set to helm the development, though take that with a pinch of salt.
The creator of both franchises, Tobmonobu Itagaki, left Team Ninja back in 2008. He started up brand-new company Apex Game Studios last year and is currently knee-deep in some NFT bullshittery touted as a "3A" fantasy MMO experience.
