With Tecmo's Team Ninja founder Tomonobu Itagaki having resigned from the company earlier this year, many have wondered what direction the developers behind Ninja Gaiden would take next. Gamasutra recently spoke with producers Hitoshi Hasegawa (who now leads the team) and Yosuke Hayashi to find out.

"We've been taking some time reformatting and reorganizing our team around, but one thing for sure is that we know what our focus and our concentration and our team goals and objectives are. ... Our staff members already know that there's a new challenge ahead of them, and there's always going to be constantly new concepts and ideas floating around. We're ready for that challenge," commented Hasegawa.

While Itagaki was a staunch supporter of the Xbox 360 and frequently claimed it was the best hardware on the market, it seems that with Itagaki no longer in the picture Team Ninja may show greater support for Sony's PS3. Hayashi, who directed Ninja Gaiden Sigma on PS3, noted, "For the PlayStation 3, we do not believe that we've seen the fullest of its potential from any standpoint: from a developer standpoint, and also a consumer standpoint -- and just in products in general. The developers have been releasing products, but there is a bigger potential. There is greater potential, and we see that possibility the most in the PlayStation 3. It's going to be up to us developers and Sony to make sure that that does happen."

It also would appear that Team Ninja will look more towards Wii going forward. Hasegawa said that although Team Ninja hasn't really supported the console, "...Tecmo as a whole, we've been supporting the platform from the very beginning."

He added, "Internally at the company, we have a lot of knowledge, and I think we've mastered most of the components to make a very compelling and entertaining product using the console. We will continue to work in that path. We have a lot of Wii console fans within the company, so hopefully there's something that we can work on."