Sony could’ve had the Dark Souls series as a PlayStation exclusive had it not been for the company’s treatment of Demon’s Souls on PS3. This is according to former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida who claims that From Software took the idea for a Demon’s Souls sequel to Bandai Namco because it was ‘disappointed’ in the way Sony handled publishing duties of the game in the West.
Speaking on the Sacred Symbols podcast recently, Shuhei Yoshida candidly spoke about why Dark Souls ended up under Bandai Namco Entertainment, despite Sony publishing its predecessor, Demon’s Souls. Early playtests for Demon’s Souls was met with a negative reaction. Since the soulslike genre was still new and fresh at the time, many testers didn’t take well to the game’s challenging nature, deliberately tanky controls and punishing checkpoint system.
This resulted in Sony having little faith that Demon’s Souls could be a success or accepted by Western players, failing to see its global appeal. Sony decided not to localise Demon’s Souls for an English release, so those duties fell to Bandai Namco in Europe and Atlus in the US. Later, Yoshida explained that Sony wanted to work with From Software on the sequel that would eventually become Dark Souls but the studio turned the offer down and opted to partner with Bandai Namco instead.
Yoshida explained:
“From Software 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. We have huge respect for Miyazaki and we were able to work with them again. Bloodborne is one of his best games.”
Bloodborne turned out to be a critical hit for Sony, going on to be nominated for and win several Game of the Year awards in 2015. Unfortunately, history repeats itself and Sony once again fumbled Bloodborne – more specifically, fans are quite upset that the company has done almost nothing with the IP despite very high demands for a remaster, remake or PC port.
Back in 2012, Yoshida also spoke to Game Informer about the debacle over Sony mistreating Demon’s Souls. “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,” said Yoshida at the time. It was definitely a gamble but it didn’t work out very well for Sony.
In 2020, Sony first-party studio Bluepoint Games remade Demon’s Souls for PS5.
Source: Sacred Symbols Podcast
