PS3 Fanboy

According to former Tecmo employee and Team Ninja leader Tomonobu Itagaki (Dead or Alive series, Ninja Gaiden Sigma), developing for the PS3 is easy-peasy. "I don't think that developing for the PS3 is hard at all. It was much harder developing for the Famicom," Itagaki told 1UP. "It's true. I mean, give someone who's developing for the PS3 a Famicom and see if they can make a game for it. They won't be able to. Yeah, that'll prove it. We'll bet a drink on it."

For the longest time now, developers have been struggling with getting a hang of the PS3 hardware; for Itagaki, it's apparently nothing more than shooting the breeze on a Tuesday. So Itagaki-san, want to develop again for the PS3 and show these fools how it's done? It's been a while hasn't it?

Itagaki can be such a meanie. Ninja Gaiden Sigma, a PS3 enhanced port of the original Xbox Ninja Gaiden, met critical acclaim when it launched on Sony's console. It wasn't a brand new game, but it certainly was an excellent one. Not so, says Ninja Gaiden creator Tomonobu Itagaki. In a CVG interview, he flatly says that the game was "no good." He added: "Despite the fact that it's on a 'next-generation' console there's no evolution whatsoever. That was made not by me, but one of my sub-ordinates who basically tried to copy the success of Ninja Gaiden."

Ouch. Imitation doesn't equate to flattery, does it? Sigma's director, Yosuke Hayashi, went on record many times about the power of the PS3, and promised more titles for Sony's system. Hayashi noted that "I have heard much criticism of the PS3, but I am confident that Ninja Gaiden Sigma will demonstrate how powerful the PS3 really is." However, will Hayashi ever get a chance to work on PS3 again?

This "subordinate" is getting backhandedly slapped, with the notion of a PS3 port of 360-exclusive Ninja Gaiden II being thrown out of the window. It would "be a loss of face for everyone involved," noted Itagaki.

[Via Joystiq]

In the latest issue of EGM, Ninja Gaiden creator Itagaki Tomonobu spoke out against the upcoming Heavenly Sword, deeming the sequences where you press certain buttons to perform certain actions (known as "hero sequences") a poor design choice and "half-assed".

Itagaki-san was quoted as saying: "I've never played a good game where the developers put a big icon of the button you're supposed to press onscreen ... I look at Heavenly Sword and it seems really half-assed, because it's asking you to do all these button-timing sequences but you are not getting much payoff from it." We have to disagree with Itagaki-san. For some of the actions you perform, there wouldn't be a really good substitute outside of timed button sequences. It's mostly for style and we enjoy watching them. With that in mind, we think there's a lot of potential for payoff.

Kyle Shubel, producer at Ninja Theory, responded to Itagaki's statement. It's a battle of words! "My response to Mr. Itagaki would be that the intent of the Hero sequences is to empower the player to experience events that would be nearly impossible to play in a natural platforming state ... for example, making the player run down ropes, leaping from rope to rope as they're being cut from underneath you, all while dodging other objects - that would be a frustrating experience to 99 percent of our users if we were to force them to do that manually." We agree, and we'll leave it at that.

[via N4G]