Tomonobu Itagaki has taken to Facebook to clarify the status of his businesses.
He shared this statement in a public post a few hours ago:
“As of October 1st, the business activities of Itagaki Games LLC have been consolidated into Itagaki Productions Inc., which has been in existence since 2010.
We have also changed the company name to Itagaki Games Inc.
We would like to make it clear that we did not make any particular announcement, but a mysterious article appeared saying “Itagaki Games is being dissolved!“
We received many messages from fans regarding this matter. Please accept our apologies for any concern this may have caused.
The reason for the change is that we are more familiar with the company structure and it is easier to do various things.
We ask for your continued support of Itagaki Games.”
Itagaki’s Facebook page has subsequently been updated to show that he is the new company’s CEO and CTO.
This was a reaction to earlier reports that Itagaki had closed the company Itagaki Games LLC. That report came from a sudden business notice on a government website. While Itagaki Games LLC’s dissolution was factually accurate, it did not paint a complete picture of the situation.
Tomonobu Itagaki entered the game industry when he joined Tecmo in 1992. He made a name for himself as the head designer for the 1990s arcade fighting game franchise, Dead Or Alive, and the 3D revival of Tecmo’s classic ninja action game, Ninja Gaiden.
While he rose to the ranks as head of Team Ninja in 2001, his career hit a snag after being accused of sexual harassment in 2006. It’s important to note that the notoriously litigious Japanese criminal justice system eventually ruled he was innocent in 2007. A year later, right before Ninja Gaiden II’s release, Itagaki resigned. He also sued Tecmo for withholding pay, and its president Yoshimi Yasuda for defamation.
He would go on to launch a new game studio called Valhalla Games. Under Valhalla, Itagaki produced Devil’s Third for the Nintendo Wii U, and later as a PC online game with Nexon. Valhalla was effectively closed and merged with another studio, Soleil, in 2021.
Itagaki Games LLC was founded in 2021, after the developer spent some time training some aspiring game developers in Italy and felt the desire to make games again. At the time, he expressed an interest working with Microsoft again. While that hasn’t come to pass yet, he wasn’t actually completely inactive at this time.
However, Itagaki’s Mobygames profile shows that he still has credits for Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time and Soleil’s release from last year, Wanted: Dead. We also traced that Itagaki had been involved in an NFT action game called Warrior, but he revealed he had left the project last year.
With a newly merged company named Itagaki Games Inc, Tomonobu Itagaki may still return for a new game project yet. The current circumstances seem even harsher than the one he found himself in when he faced seven years of setbacks before getting Devil’s Third published at all. But there are some opportunities out there, with Chinese and Korean game companies looking to do new business, and even hire Japanese developers and studios in the process. We would certainly like to see if he does still have something left to show us.
