Ninja Gaiden 4 Announced, To Be Co-Developed by PlatinumGames

One of gaming’s oldest ninjas is about to flip back onto the scene. Ninja Gaiden 4 was announced today, and although it was revealed during Microsoft’s latest Xbox Developer Direct stream, it won’t just be on Xbox, with versions coming to PC and the PlayStation 5, as well. And although we mean no disrespect to this series or its long-term developers at Team Ninja, we’re mostly interested in it because of the studio listed as co-developer: PlatinumGames, the studio behind the Bayonetta games, the underhyped Vanquish and Wonderful 101 games, and that developed the excellent Nier: Automata for Square Enix (under the guidance of Yoko Taro).

A flagship game for Tecmo (now Koei Tecmo), the Ninja Gaiden name and its star Ryu Hayabusa have been kicking around since 1988, when the original first appeared in arcades as a fairly standard beat ’em up (albeit one that I can personally vouch had the longest lines this side of Double Dragon 2 at the bowling alley arcade). It’s rep was really sealed by the Nintendo Entertainment System version that came out in Japan later that year and in America in 1989; although it bore some visual similarities to the arcade game, it was a bigger and more ambitious beast, with a greater focus on platforming and a cutscene-heavy cinematic presentation that made it stand out at the time. (And a punishing level of difficulty that felt extreme even by the heady standards of the day.) That series ultimately saw three installments on the NES, along with ports and spin-offs for systems like the PC Engine, the Game Boy, the Sega Master System, and more. After a decade of dormancy Tecmo revived it with an acclaimed third-person action game on the original Xbox; that game was similarly ported far and wide, and also saw exactly two sequels, the last of which came out in 2012. After another 13 years that saw one more spin-off and a compilation of the three games from the second series, the name is being revived once more with Ninja Gaiden 4.

PlatinumGames should be an ideal co-developer for Team Ninja to work with. Since forming in 2007, they’ve made some of the best action games around, most notably the wonderfully surreal Bayonetta series. If anybody can help Team Ninja push this almost 40-year-old franchise into intriguing new directions, it’d be Platinum—assuming the departure of studio co-founder Hideki Kamiya, who directed Bayonetta for Platinum and Devil May Cry, one of the genre’s pillars, for Capcom in 2001, hasn’t drained the studio of too much talent.

Although no official release date was announced, Ninja Gaiden 4 is expected to arrive in Fall 2025. It should be a big year for Ninja Gaiden fans: Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, an upgraded remake of 2008’s Ninja Gaiden 2, was also announced—and released!—today, and the retro-styled sidescroller Ninja Gaiden Ragebound is also expected this year. Check out the announcement trailer for Ninja Gaiden 4 below.