Ninja Gaiden 2 for the Xbox 360 has sold over 1 million copies worldwide announced Tecmo. The game reached the platinum-selling mark in two and a half months with over 40% of the game’s sales from the United States. With the exact sales number as of July 31st in the U.S. being 412,000 units totaling nearly $25 million dollars.
Ninja Gaiden II is the extremely violent follow-up to the only-a-bit-lesser-violent best-seller Ninja Gaiden revival for the original Xbox. The game wasn’t as highly praised as the original it still received fairly high marks and is a prequel of sorts to the original NES Ninja Gaiden trilogy, chronicling the early adventures of series’ hero Ryu Hayabusa.
Shortly after the game’s release though it was mired by an extremely ugly resignation of the series director and celebrated Japanese game designer Tomonobu Itagaki, who subsequently sued Tecmo for $1.4 million dollars while also blasting the company and it’s leadership. This caused Tecmo’s share price to slide and further employees also reportedly filed class-action lawsuits against Tecmo in his wake. Adding further to the drama, last week Tecmo’s president, Yoshimi Yasuda abruptly stepped down citing unspecified “personal reasons”. So this announcement of the positive sales for Ninja Gaiden II must definitely come as breath of fresh air for Tecmo.