FromSoftware didn’t want Sony to publish Dark Souls as it was ‘disappointed’ by how Demon’s Souls was treated
It’s claimed FromSoftware teamed up with Bandai Namco because Sony didn’t publish Demon’s Souls in the West
FromSoftware didn’t want to work on a Demon’s Souls sequel with Sony because it was disappointed with the way the game was handled, former PlayStation exec Shuhei Yoshida claims.
Demon’s Souls was developed by FromSoftware in collaboration with Sony Japan Studio. During the game’s development, it was planned that the game would be published globally by Sony, but this didn’t come to be.
Although these days Demon’s Souls is considered the first entry in FromSoftware’s popular ‘Soulslike’ series of games, it’s said that at the time Sony couldn’t see the game’s global appeal.
Due to the game’s high difficulty and negative early playtests, Sony decided not to localise Demon’s Souls for an English language release. Instead, in the US the game was published by Atlus and in Europe publishing was handled by Bandai Namco.
Speaking to the Sacred Symbols podcast, former SIE president Yoshida explained that Sony wanted to work on the sequel to Demon’s Souls with FromSoftware, but the developer turned it down and instead decided to work with Bandai Namco on what would become Dark Souls.
“FromSoftware was already working on the sequel, but they were so disappointed with how PlayStation treated them, we wanted to work with them again but they passed on it,” Yoshida claimed.
Sony would eventually work with FromSoftware again some years later with the PS4 exclusive Bloodborne, something Yoshida said he was happy to see.
“We have huge respect for Miyazaki and we were able to work with them again,” he said. “Bloodborne is one of his best games.”
Further reading
In an interview with Game Informer back in 2012, Yoshida gave more detail on Sony’s decision not to localise Demon’s Souls for the west, admitting that he didn’t get the appeal at first.
“For my personal experience with Demon’s Souls, when it was close to final I spent close to two hours playing it and after two hours I was still standing at the beginning at the game,” he recalled at the time. “I said: ‘This is crap. This is an unbelievably bad game.’ So I put it aside.
“Luckily, third party publishers, Atlus in North America and Namco in Europe [stepped in], and it really became a great hit outside of Japan. We definitely dropped the ball from a publishing standpoint, including studio management side. We were not able to see the value of the product we were making.”
