Published , by TJ Denzer
Published , by TJ Denzer
Masaaki Yamagiwa has helped bring some pretty good projects to life in his time throughout the gaming industry. He’s been a lead producer on Sonic games, including Sonic: Unleashed’s day levels, as well as Japan Studio’s Tokyo Jungle and FromSoftware’s Bloodborne. His eclectic experience has helped craft some solid gaming, and now it seems he’s up to something new with Team Ninja. Recently, the latter just revealed that they’ve been working with Yamagiwa in some capacity.
Yamagiwa’s newish relationship with Team Ninja was revealed by former Sony Interactive Entertainment boss and current independent studio relations lead Shuhei Yoshida on the latter’s Twitter. It was there that Yoshida revealed he’d had a get-together with developers from Team Ninja, which apparently now includes Masaaki Yamagiwa. Specifically, Yoshida claims Yamagiwa seems to have joined Team Ninja in official capacity at some point. It looks to be a solid fit. Yamagiwa had a heavy hand in the development of Bloodborne and Team Ninja has been producing its own similar vein of action-adventure roleplay games in the form of the Nioh series.
It’s also worth noting that Team Ninja has recently been working with Square Enix on upcoming Final Fantasy action hack-‘n-slash and staunchly anti-chaos game, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. However, Masaaki Yamagiwa doesn’t seem to have any connection to this particular project.
In all likelihood, Yamagiwa would be a good fit on a number of Team Ninja possibilities. Nioh lead producer Fumihiko Yasuda once told Shacknews in an interview that the studio has some other projects it would like to get done first (Stranger of Paradise likely being one of them), but Nioh 3 is still very likely once everything is said and done. It wouldn’t be out of the question to see another Ninja Gaiden come to new generations as well with the recent Master Collection having launched earlier this year.
Whatever the case, a talent like Masaaki Yamagiwa being with Team Ninja is extremely interesting to say the least. Here’s hoping we see something come out of their interaction and collaboration in the near future. We’ll share details here at Shacknews as new information becomes available.