Itagaki's New Studio Has New Name

Famitsu's newest issue included an interview with Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive mastermind Tomonobu Itagaki discussing his current work following his stint as head of Team Ninja and his departure from Tecmo in 2008, and 1up has a pretty great translation up. In the interview, Itagaki mentions that his studio is now known as Valhalla, rather than Tokyo Vikings (although we kind of liked the Tokyo Vikings name, if we're being honest), and that work continues apace on their current title, whose platform wasn't specified.

Perhaps as interestingly, Itagaki continues his record of outspoken statements about game development in general, this time in reference to the development practices of publicly traded developers and publishers. Via 1up:

"Valhalla is about 50 people right now," Itagaki told Famitsu. "That may expand a bit, but it's not going to be a 100-person company. 50 people working for two years can produce something better than 100 people working for one year. 100 times 1 and 50 times 2 may produce the same number, but not in creative businesses like this one. I know nobody means any harm by it, but publicly-traded companies have to prove their worth to the stock market on a year-by-year basis, and that means they can't focus all-out on quality. We're creators here; we like making things more than doing math."

For Itagaki, leaving Tecmo and joining Kanematsu at Valhalla all comes down to creative freedom. "I think success in games comes when you satisfy all three pieces of the game business," he said, "the players, the developers, and the links between them -- the retail and media people. I've been making games for nearly 20 years and I've done that maybe two or three times. It's definitely hard, but it's not impossible -- all three groups are there for the games, after all. The thing is that I think the Japanese industry has made achieving that all but impossible these days. There's an equation you can use to satisfy all three groups, but once money enters the picture, you start neglecting the things that're most important and the equation winds up unsolvable. My friends and I went independent because we were wasting our time wrangling with issues like that."

The interview is a great read, so I advise that you check it out. In the meantime, I'm looking to start an office pool on Valhalla making an announcement during a certain first party's press conference at this year's E3.

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