Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty and Nioh developer Team Ninja says it’s open to outsourcing a new Ninja Gaiden game, either to another studio or a younger team of developers internally at the company. However, this would only happen if the game would “exceed expectations.”
Team Ninja is currently hard at work on a couple of big AAA titles, namely Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty which will hit consoles and PC in early 2023 and the newly announced Rise of the Ronin, a PS5 exclusive arriving in 2024. The studio might have its hands full at the moment, but it hasn’t forgotten about its tentpole Ninja Gaiden franchise. Last year, Team Ninja released the Ninja Gaiden Master Collection, which remastered and bundled three previous fan-favourite Ninja Gaiden games.
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Speaking to Video Games Chronicle recently, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty director Fumihiko Yasuda was asked about the possibility of reviving Ninja Gaiden, though gave a pretty transparent answer about outsourcing the IP to a younger team or new studio:
“We’re not announcing anything, but both of those ideas sound like great plans and are both possibilities in a sense. Those are both very, very reasonable ideas for potentially a sequel in any series, not just Ninja Gaiden. But what I want to say is, if we were to theoretically work with another company on a new Ninja Gaiden title, we would need to make sure that it would be a title that the fans would really enjoy and exceed their expectations.”
Team Ninja’s caution about meeting fan expectations is certainly justified as the last outsourced Ninja Gaiden game, 2014’s Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z, ended up garnering mostly bad reviews and almost put an early nail in the series’ coffin.
At the moment, Team Ninja is focusing on its new projects and IPs which could end up being big potential hits for them. As for the Ninja Gaiden series, it’s safe to say that we probably won’t see a new entry for a very long time unless Team Ninja agrees to either of those ideas.
Source: Video Games Chronicle
