Ninja Theory
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Ninja Theory are a games development company based in Cambridge, UK, they are best known as a developer of high budget games such as DMC: Devil May Cry, Heavenly Sword and Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice. Beginning as Just Add Monsters in March 2000, the company was founded by Tameem Antoniades, Nina Kristensen and Mike Ball, producing the Xbox 360 Exclusive Kung Fu Chaos, after being acquired by Argonaut Software just after founding. After buying themselves out of Argonauts liquidation in 2004, the team started work on a game that would become Heavenly Sword, which was an extraordinarily expensive title to develop. Facing financial ruin again, the team were funded to carry on production by Sony Computer Entertainment. The deal was not good for the studio, as in return for the costs of the game, which was well over 10 million pounds, Sony were left with the IP and the technology that had been created to make the game. Sony were guilty of interference with gameplay elements, which diluted the more interesting features, making it an almost entirely action driven title. A stellar cast of Andy Serkis, who was also a creative director and Steven Berkoff, ensured the motion capture and acting was top notch. Heavenly Sword, despite reviewing well was not a commercial success, failing to break even, with PS3 exclusivity further harming sales, as the console was at the start of it's commercial life. Ninja Theory had to find a new backer for their next game Enslaved. Namco Bandai agreed to publish the game, but also interfered with the development, the studio had to use the Unreal Graphics engine, as they had handed over their own to Sony. Once again despite reviewing well, the game was not a hit. Thankfully Capcom liked the studios approach to creating games, and in 2013 tasked them with the development of DMC: Devil May Cry, the studio enraged fans by changing the appearance of the character Dante, even receiving death threats. The studio reponded by saying the game needed to change from the dated look of the PS2 games. Despite the controversy, the game was a major success, and would allow the studio the freedom to produce their next title by themselves. Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice, used a much smaller team to still produce a game of high production values, and it explores the theme of psychosis, using consultation from Cambridge University, and the backing of the Wellcome Trust. The game was a commercial and critical success, gaining 5 Bafta nominations, with particular praise for it's portrayal of mental illness. In June 2018 the company was acquired by Microsoft to become one of the Xbox Game Studios, and released a new title, Bleeding Edge, in 2020.
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