Ninja Gaiden creator and former Team Ninja lead Tomonobu Itagaki is hard at work on his first game at his new Valhalla Game Studios. He’s said that the team is “currently focusing” all their attention into one retail game.

“Valhalla will compete in the field of mainstream, packaged games so it wouldn’t be effective to thin our ranks by dividing our 50-man staff into different projects,” Itagaki told 1UP in a new interview.

The game’s been in development for a long time, if I’m reading Itagaki’s hints correctly.

“During this period I’ve consumed at least 1,000 shochu sake bottles. I’ve also shot a million photos with my D-SLRs (Digital Single-Lens Reflex cameras). I’ve put over 2,000 train cars on my railway model layouts. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.”

According to Itagaki, we’ll be hearing more concrete information on the game “soon.” He left it at that.