Team Ninja was formed by Tomonobu Itagaki from a group of game designers working at Tecmo specifically for the purpose of creating the home versions of the fighting game Dead or Alive and its sequel, Dead or Alive 2. In 2008, the action-adventure gameNinja Gaiden II for the Xbox 360 was published by Microsoft Game Studios, making it the first game created by Team Ninja to not be published by Tecmo; Tecmo Koei later released an enhanced version of Ninja Gaiden II on the PlayStation 3 as Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2. On June 3, 2008, Itagaki announced that he would be leaving Tecmo and Team Ninja on July 1, 2008, citing difficulties with the company. In the same statement announcing his resignation, he also announced that he was filing a lawsuit against Tecmo over unpaid bonuses for his work on Dead or Alive 4 for the Xbox 360. It was later reported that he was fired from Tecmo on June 18, 2008 in retaliation for his lawsuit. Many of his colleagues at Team Ninja quit as well to join him at his new game development team, Valhalla Game Studios. Some ex-Team Ninja members also helped with Ubisoft's '. Team Ninja also worked on multiple titles for Nintendo. In 2010, Team Ninja co-developed a new Metroid action-adventure game for Nintendo's Wii console, titled '. They collaborated with Omega Force for Hyrule Warriors, an action game set in The Legend of Zelda universe, in 2014. In 2013, following a reconstructing of Koei Tecmo, Team Ninja was split into two distinct development teams. They are dubbed Ichigaya Development Group 1 and Ichigaya Development Group 2. In 2016, Team Ninja garnered public attention after their decision to not release Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 in North America or Europe, resulting in a controversy within the video game industry about the sexualised portrayal of female characters within their games. Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Shuhei Yoshida said in a statement; "It's due to cultural differences. The West has its own thinking about how to depict women in games media which is different from Japan." In 2017, Team Ninja released their new action-adventure game Nioh, which has received multiple revisions and has been in development since 2004, to great critical response. They released for the Nintendo Switch in 2019 as well as Dead or Alive 6. Team Ninja released the prequel to Nioh, Nioh 2, in March of 2020.
Games
Future
Cancelled games
- A prequel to the Dead or Alive series, which was going to focus on the backstory of Kasumi and Ayane, and reportedly was not going to be a fighting game. It was cancelled in November 2010.
Ninja Gaiden 3DS - A Nintendo 3DS project announced by Team Ninja in 2011. It was quietly cancelled at a later date.
