Itagaki Takes His Team with Him (Maybe)
- Scribbled on June 16th, 2008 by Jonathon Howard
- Filed in Industry News, Microsoft Xbox 360, Rumor Mill
Slow news day, so the folks over at 1Up are giving us hearsay and rumor! That’s okay: this is a juicy one.
As we already reported, Tomonobu Itagaki the head of Team Ninja and re-creator of Ninja Gaiden, left Tecmo under less than optimal circumstances. Itagaki was so unhappy about it that he’s suing the President of the company. That’s what we do know.
The rest of this post hasn’t been substantiated, apparently though, a great many of the Itagaki’s workers (as many as three dozen) are also exiting stage left, and to add insult to injury will also be suing Tecmo. 31 lawsuits in a two weeks has to hurt! Rumors often lead to more rumors and all sorts have begun to surface. The most interesting one being that Microsoft has already jumped at the chance of hiring (another) big name Japanese designer and already have him working on a new project, the chance to hire most of his original team as well… Christmas might be coming early to Redmond, Washington.
June 17th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
[...] leaves and decides to sue your company, It’s worse when the majority of the team he headed follows suit. It is an absolute disaster when every employee you have files a class action law suit against you. [...]
June 18th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
[...] reports in the “foreign media” which allege that the company’s Team Ninja was hemorrhaging talent, facing a lot of time in Court fighting a class action lawsuit filed by its employees, and slapping [...]