Team Ninja may have let go of their former leader, Tomonobu Itagaki, but they don’t seem to be doing bad for themselves due to it. In a new interview at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 director Yosuke Hayashi said that even though their former leader is gone, they “hope to continue to be the Team Ninja that we always have been.”

With that, they’ve also told us that they are working on something “completely new”. Yup, that means an original IP.

“With Sigma 2, Team Ninja hopes that we can really satisfy and convince the hardest-core fan of Ninja Gaiden to be satisfied as much as a newcomer to the series will be satisfied that this is a great action game. That’s obviously the first thing on our plate right now. But we are trying to balance a lot of different acts, but within that, like I said before, is something completely new for Team Ninja.”

So what could Team Ninja have up their sleeves? I’d like to see what they can pull off.

GDC: Team Ninja’s Hayashi Teases New IP, Talks Studio’s Tough Road Ahead [Gamasutra]