Gamasutra Interviews Tomonobu Itagaki

One of my absolute favorite people in the games development community, Team Ninja executive producer Tomonobu Itagaki, was recently interview by Gamasutra – in other words, it’s one of the few times you’ll ever see him talking about the development community at large. Team Ninja is of course the team behind Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden series. He can be called arrogant, but you can’t deny that he’s always fascinating to listen to (or, in this case, read).

When discussing his choice of the DS over the PSP for a handheld Ninja Gaiden, he said, “When Nintendo first announced the specs of its unit, it was around the time that Sony was also announcing that they were bringing out the PSP. When I looked at the estimated specs of both, I knew which platform I wanted to work on… and I am sure that you, or people like you, might wonder, ‘If the visual is so important, then why choose DS over the PSP? The reason is because the PlayStation Portable is basically designed on the philosophy of having a console that you can take with you. They are basically just toning down what we see on home consoles such as the 360 or the PS3; whereas the DS was looking at a whole new method of input.

“Just as I said earlier, one of the key aspects of game design is the interactivity between the user’s input and what happens on the screen, so I thought: here is a chance to do something totally original, using the strengths of this hardware. If I was going to make a game for PSP, I would be better off making a game for PS2, because they are essentially attempting to do the same thing.

“So the whole viewpoint of the PSP versus the DS is flawed. What Sony really needed to do was get those key Game Boy users and broaden the market. When Nintendo first announced the DS, they were very realistic at the time in knowing that it may be a success or it may not; they certainly weren’t convinced of its success. They just knew that it was something they needed to try, for the sake of the industry, to continue to expand the kind of experiences that were available. And that type of spirit is something that I could relate with, and part of the reason why I chose to go with this hardware.”

I could keep going, but I’ll stop there. Head over to Gamasutra and check out the entire interview now.