No one can dispute the brilliance of Tomonobu Itakagi. The man is a game design genius. His main criticism is that his outspoken demeanor can outshine his efforts and that’s where it begins to gray. He has recently left Tecmo’s Team Ninja and is suing for bonuses he claimed were promised but not delivered. He is also involved one way or another with a sexual harassment suit. Again, his non-gaming facets are affecting his reputation. Tecmo has responded to his claims with this brief message:

Our company getting sued by this employee is huge problem… the reasons for making this lawsuit public are self-centered. What’s more, this employee is filing this suit for himself and making it seem like he alone is responsible for the development of the game titles the rest of the Team Ninja staff had poured its heart into. Team NINJA is currently working on a line-up of new titles. All of Team NINJA is starting to work together on interesting new game titles.

How will team Ninja fair without its head Samurai? Seems like a huge headache is gone and maybe they can focus on some new ideas and not the extraneous bullshit.