Former Koei Tecmo and Team Ninja member, Tomonobu Itagaki, announced that he has started his own gaming studio. The studio is simply called Itagaki Games. He notes that he started the company because he decided to make games again while he was teaching jobs to foster juniors.
Itagaki made this information known when he posted part of an edited interview to his Facebook page with Bloomberg where he talked to them about the 20th anniversary of the Xbox console.
A quote from the interview shows his thoughts on whether or not Microsoft would be interested in buying his studio:
Haha, I would start again with questions that I made to Seamus two decades ago. Back then, I asked him, are you confident that you will beat PS2? He said yes. Xbox is called “Project Midway” and I’ll gain the supremacy with it. That’s why I trusted him and actually created Xbox-exclusive games for about 10 years. 20 years have passed since then, and I established my own company, Itagaki Games, which is not Tecmo, nor Valhalla. I know Microsoft is still aggressive. If they reach out to me, it will be an honor for me.
The full interview can be read on his Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/tomonobu.itagaki/posts/2739978682932899
Previously, Itagaki worked with Koei Tecmo to develop the Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden games. Itagaki left Koei Tecmo under less than pleasant terms in 2008 and ended up suing the company. He then went on to establish Valhalla Games Studio where he developed Devil’s Third which released in 2016… a year before he would resign from the company and go onto his teaching gig.
Source: Crunchyroll
