Team NINJA

Team Ninja is a Japanese studio based in Tokyo and today a division of Koei Tecmo. It began in 1995 as Tecmo Creative #3, a Tecmo team led by Tomonobu Itagaki. Tecmo was in financial trouble in the mid-1990s and, seeing how popular Virtua Fighter was in Japan, management asked Itagaki for a similar fighting game. The result was Dead or Alive (1996), fast and deliberately provocative, a series whose success helped save Tecmo from bankruptcy.

In 1999 the team was renamed Team Ninja and started work on a new Ninja Gaiden. First planned for arcades and the Dreamcast, it moved to PlayStation 2 and finally to Xbox, whose hardware had impressed Itagaki; it came out in 2004 to acclaim. Ninja Gaiden II (2008) was published by Microsoft Game Studios, making it the studio's first game not published by Tecmo. That year Itagaki announced he was leaving and sued Tecmo's president over unpaid bonuses for Dead or Alive 4; many team members followed him to Valhalla Game Studios.

After the Tecmo-Koei merger announced in 2009, the studio carried on inside Koei Tecmo under Yosuke Hayashi. It worked with Nintendo on Metroid: Other M (2010) and with Omega Force on Hyrule Warriors (2014). Nioh (2017), a project Koei had started in 2004 and passed between several teams before handing it over, won several awards and became Team Ninja's best-selling game. Dead or Alive 6 (2019), Nioh 2 (2020) and Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin (2022) followed.

In 2022 Fumihiko Yasuda, who led development on Nioh and Nioh 2, took over from Hayashi. Under him came Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty (2023) and Rise of the Rōnin (2024), another collaboration with Sony. The studio turned 30 in 2025 and released Ninja Gaiden 4, co-developed with PlatinumGames and published by Xbox Game Studios. Its slate places Nioh 3 and the Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly remake in 2026 and Wo Long 2: Wings of Ember in 2027, with a new Dead or Alive also in the works.