Team Ninja president Fumihiko Yasuda announced this during a panel at the Korea G-Star Conference in Busan, South Korea. He also stated that while he couldn’t provide more info, he’s working to ensure there’s more news to share on both series as soon as possible. Yasuda’s keynote speech was first reported by VGC and translated from the South Korean online publication Ruliweb. Yasuda’s speech came with a slide presentation showing Team Ninja’s two iconic series Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive with the headline “The future of Team Ninja- Reboot of popular series.” The G-Star Conference is South Korea’s largest games event and many of the region’s developers use it as a platform for presentations and reveals. As a result, it’s not a surprise the studio chose the platform to make this announcement. The conference was not the first time Yasuda will express a desire for a reboot of the iconic titles. In January 2021, during an interview with VGC, the video game director stated that although he had no interest in developing a new Ninja Gaiden title, he would love to return to the series someday. In another interview in early 2022, Yasuda disclosed what he believed is required to develop a new Ninja Gaiden title. In his words, “all the pieces would need to fit, and it would need to be the right team… either a younger team internally or another company that would really need to fit the Ninja Gaiden pedigree.” Ninja Gaiden was originally an arcade game that came out in 1988. The most recent Ninja Gaiden project was released in 2021 with the name Ninja Gaiden: Master Collection. The project was a compilation of previous games in the franchise including Ninja Gaiden Sigma, Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, and Ninja Gaiden Sigma 3. However, the last original release in the series came in 2012 with the launch of Ninja Gaiden 3, which Yasuda directed, following the exit of the game’s lead creator Tomonobu Itagaki. Dead or Alive is a popular gaming franchise that launched in 1996. The game was a massive success and quickly garnered a large fanbase. Since the first game, Team Ninja has released five other installments with the latest Dead or Alive 6 arriving in 2019. The series has also seen the release of numerous spinoffs, including Dead or Alive Ultimate, Dead or Alive Paradise, and Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball. On top of the new Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden installments, Team Ninja has two more games in the pipeline: Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty and Rise of the Ronin, which are slated for release in 2023 and 2024, respectively. Most likely the new Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden games will come after Rise of the Ronin is out in 2024. Nevertheless, we expect the company to provide more information on the projects as time goes on, including the potential release date, the platforms it will release to, and whether it will be developing the reboots in-house or outsourcing to an external development company.
