'Dead or Alive' creator 'Tomonobu Itagaki' starts a new studio

Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden director Tomonobu Itagaki has announced the creation of a new studio, Itagaki Games.

The announcement was made on his Facebook page on January 17, where he posted a full transcript of an interview with Bloomberg. 

Towards the end of the interview, Itagaki responds to a question asking him what he has been doing recently, saying: “For the past four years, I’ve been teaching job to foster juniors, but now I feel like I want to make a game again and just establish a company for that purpose.”

There was little else revealed about the specifics of the studio, though Itagaki did say that his new studio is “not Tecmo, nor Valhalla” which are the the previous studios he had worked with for Dead or Alive and Devil’s Third respectively.

Due to the director’s long history of collaborating with Microsoft, Itagaki said that “I know Microsoft is still aggressive” and that it would be “an honor” to work with them on any upcoming games.

Itagaki is most famous for his work on the Dead or Alive series, which he worked as Producer and Director on until Dead or Alive 4, and spin off Dead or Alive: Xtreme 2.

He was also the Director of the reboot of the Ninja Gaiden series which was an Xbox exclusive in 2004. After finishing Ninja Gaiden II in 2008, Itagaki left Tecmo, and founded Valhalla studios and directed Devil’s Third which released in 2015.