The identity of the mystery game being revealed on today’s Xbox Developer Direct has been the subject of much speculation. While most agreed it would come from a Japanese studio, very few actually managed to guess what it could be.
Well, we now know that it’s none other than a new Ninja Gaiden. Ninja Gaiden 4 in fact, a game created in a joint effort between Team Ninja and Platinum Games!
As part of Xbox’s January Developer Direct livestream, we got to take a trip to the legendary Team Ninja studio, the developer of the upcoming Ninja Gaiden. This is the team’s next big project, and today brought us a first-ever look at it. Setting aside how unusual for it not to have leaked, it’s even more surprising that it got revealed on an Xbox stage.
What we see is exactly what any Ninja Gaiden fan would want. A lot of fast paced combat, gory action, and slick melee combat. All with a rain-slocked aesthetic to boot. Even Ryu Hayabusa is back, seemingly in somewhat of a rival role! All of this comes with a nice talk-through on what the game will be like, courtesy of the development team. You can watch the reveal trailer yourself below!
The Ninja Gaiden series has a storied history with Xbox, of course, but Team Ninja has mostly been associated with the Sony side of the business. Since the original Nioh, and later with its sequel, Nioh 2, Team Ninja has been thought of recently as a PlayStation studio. The Nioh games ended up coming to PC, but never Xbox. While Team Ninja did release Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty on Xbox, the studio’s major project to follow, Rise of the Ronin, remains a PS5 exclusive.
Rise of the Ronin had a lot of interesting ideas of its own, but ended up learning the wrong lessons from Western open-world games. It delivered a diluted experience that couldn’t satisfy longtime fans of the studio’s exceptional combat mechanics, nor newcomers looking for a breezy Samurai-ish simulator.
Outside of this new project, the Ninja Gaiden series appears to be having something of a renaissance. Just recently, at the 2024 Game Awards, publisher of retro-inspired games, Dotemu, announced Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, a new 2D action game from the studio behind the Blasphemous series.