Throughout the original Xbox generation and half of the Xbox 360 generation, Team Ninja and Xbox worked closely together, with everything the former released being exclusive to the latter. Only when the creator of Dead or Alive and the modern Ninja Gaiden - Tomonobu Itagaki - left Team Ninja, was the partnership ended.
Since then, the developer has worked mainly with Sony instead, but during last month's Xbox Developer Direct, a new collaboration was presented again; partly around Ninja Gaiden II Black, which was surprisingly both announced and released and included with Game Pass, and partly with Ninja Gaiden 4, which will be launched later in 2025 and is also included with Game Pass.
Perhaps it's with this in mind that there is now a big Xbox sale with some of the lowest prices we've ever seen on the Dead or Alive series. The offers are valid for two weeks so take the opportunity to get some classic and entertaining fighting:
We here at the editorial office can particularly recommend parts 4 and 5, where the former is a really tight fighting game that also has Master Chief as a playable character and a Halo arena, and the second is a complete edition with a really nice single player. Even part 2 is very good if you want to get back to the fast-paced and classic basics of the series.