1UP: "It's been over two years since Tomonobu Itagaki -- game-dev bad boy and chief mind behind Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden -- suddenly left Team Ninja, the development studio he helped put on the map. Itagaki fell off the limelight for a bit before announcing the founding of Valhalla Game Studios this past March, an independent dev he's running alongside fellow ex-Tecmo dev Satoshi Kanematsu. Team Ninja themselves, though, have never talked much in public about how the headline-grabbing defections in 2008 affected them as a studio...until now, that is."
Saad from eXputer: "Team Ninja's stories may not appeal to everyone due to their barebones nature but they deserve credit for being fun."
Exputer dude says Team Ninja needs more credit for their stories (what their known for) and credit for being fun (also known for challenging and fun gameplay). Team Ninja gets a LOT of credit. That's why they keep making games. You just can't expect everyone to award them the attention-level and regard that you think they deserve.
"I’m aware that some things are often not for everyone. Not because someone is actively gatekeeping but due to the product or premise failing to appeal to the masses" - Hmmm l dunno, sounds kinda like we are about to go for a cruise down gatekeeper blvd to me.
Takeaway, Exputer as a pimple gaming journal site that should not be concerned about the recognition standards of a studio they have zero involvement in. You perspective is outsider and totally disconnected from reality as far as how the industry sees them.
Takeaway 2, Exputer is only in about a generation deep into Team Ninja. Posers. Take your gate keepy BS and shove it. We know what makes team ninja great and they are doing just fine doing what THEY do.
Every branch under Koei Tecmo is talented I am a big fan of theirs no matter what the game is or who makes it.
I thought Nioh 1+2's stories were fine, nothing amazing but they kept me interested. William and the Protag in 2 were pretty cool. Wo Long was ok I guess but it just felt like another retelling of the three kingdoms again which we've seen told so much in video games and especially dynasty warriors.
Where is a new DEAD OR ALIVE !!!!
That is the only game we care about from Team Ninja 😂
Rise of the Ronin's difficulty options include Narrative, Intermediate and Hard. As the name suggests, Narrative mode is for players who just want to experience the story without any serious combat. Intermediate is your standard medium difficulty that will provide some challenge while Hard is in line with Team Ninja's previous games like Nioh and Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty.
The Nioh team’s next samurai tale launches on March 22 as a PS5 exclusive
The visuals seem somewhat unpolished and looks like from a last gen game. I wouldn’t mind a delay.
Ghost of Tsushima did not have the best graphics quality compared to other PS exclusives but the beautiful art style made it stand out. This game just looks generic in comparison.
Cool story bro
You guys are fvcked, deal with it.
Who else can come up with... "can the boobs be bigger?"
"Reknowned" game studio heads are rarely all that important to their dev studio, except as a figurehead.
By the time you become a figurehead, you're doing administrative and PR work -- that's good for the team as a whole, but its the team you hire that are the real talent. That's why you hired them.
If a studio loses 30+ staff, that's a big deal, and it often wrecks the company, because inevitably the higher-ups let go of people they didn't want to, and the recovery is painful. If they lose a figurehead or two, that's not a big deal... at least not in the short-term during which the team made by that person still exists.
Infinity Ward would still be respectable, if it had only been Zampella and West that had left, as an example. Once a significant chunk of the rest of the team bailed, though, that was the real end of IW.
People, too often, mistake the lack of high-level, high-visibility positions at companies as being a lack of talent to fill such positions. That's just not true -- the skills required to be decent, or even excellent, in those jobs are not rare at all. It's only that there are just a few positions available, and the power they have, that makes them important.
Losing masses of people... now that hurts. If you could make a list of the "top 10 people who hurt company XYZ the most when they left", by rewinding time and watching what happens each time a different individual leaves, I'll wager that 99% of the people on that list would be in the "average joe" section of the credits for company XYZ's games -- people you have never read the name of, except in passing, via a credits screen. Engineers, artists, designers. Producers, directors, presidents, CTOs, CFOs, etc.. you wouldn't see them much -- they can be replaced easier than you might think.
Without Itagaki, Tecmo would have no identity. It would be like the Yankees losing Derek Jeter or Lakers losing Kobe Bryant. Now let's see what they do. Keeping my eye on NG3, hoping it's going to be very good. Let's see if the new guy can make a good game on his own.