As many fans realized in the fallout of Ninja Gaiden 4’s announcement, the franchise seems to have become a mere blip in the eyes of the Xbox faithful. Even though Tecmo Koei moved to make the franchise multiplatform, the 2000s Ninja Gaiden titles were truly unique, as one of the few bright spots in Microsoft’s attempts to enter gaming in Japan.
As it turned out, the Xbox 360 benefited from the emerging trends of Western game developers, who Microsoft could more easily make deals with, becoming more successful and making more popular games than their Japanese counterparts. The likes of Capcom and Konami didn’t necessarily go away, but Sega and SNK were among those who struggled. And the developers they were struggling to compete with included the then independent studios of Activision, Bethesda, and Blizzard, as well as Electronic Arts, THQ, Rockstar and Ubisoft.
That is why Ninja Gaiden for the Xbox and Ninja Gaiden 2 for the Xbox 360 were so unique. Team Ninja, then headed by Tomonobu Itagaki, ventured to meet Western and Japanese gamers halfway, with a vision of action games, and the notion of the ninja, that would appeal to both. Being on Xbox also meant Team Ninja were unafraid to pile in the violence and gore, although they also brought in the steep difficulty that would shy most gamers away until FromSoftware made difficulty trendy.
As reported by Windows Central, Phil Spencer spoke about the game in GamerTag Radio’s 20 year anniversary podcast to hosts Danny Peña and Paris Lilly. He went a long way to deliver Ninja Gaiden 4, a title that many, if not most, Xbox gamers don’t remember or have nostalgia for, but one that had just enough of a vocal fanbase that Spencer listened. To paraphrase Spencer here, they started knocking on doors six or seven years ago, but the game itself has only been in development in four of those years.
Spencer then said this:
“I feel great about our relationships with the publishers in Japan.
It’s what the Xbox community deserves and I want to stay focused on that.”
Just to put things in context, six to seven years ago was the middle of the eight generation. At that point, Xbox One was clearly not going to catch up the PlayStation 4, but to Spencer’s credit, he had kept working to get first and third party games for the platform. Microsoft also tried to get developers on board with Universal Windows Platform (UWP). While many developers decried the closed garden nature of the format, it would go on to be the basis for cross platform titles on Game Pass.
Team Ninja just released Nioh, revealing that they were more than a Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive studio, and moved forward with a clear new direction independent of their past. Ninja Gaiden 3 had been a disaster, and the upgraded version Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge didn’t do enough to course correct. And then there’s PlatinumGames.
In 2017, Microsoft cancelled PlatinumGames’ Scalebound. In the same year, the studio released Nier: Automata, published by Square Enix, and announced Bayonetta 3. While many Xbox faithful continued to be hopeful that Spencer would ring up Kamiya or PG again to bring back Scalebound, most fans and the press dismissed their relationship as over.
So it would have been safe to say, if this rumor came up all those years ago, absolutely nobody would have believed it. As it turned out, Spencer had moved to make things good with Xbox fans, and not only the ones clamoring for third party games. If Spencer recalls the timeline correctly, he had been taking all those please and angry feedback about Scalebound and the lack of Ninja Gaiden to heart all along.
You can check out the full episode of Gamertag Radio below.
