Former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida says FromSoftware didn't want to work with Sony on Dark Souls because the company didn't publish Demon's Souls in the West as it had originally agreed.
Speaking on the Sacred Symbols podcast, as spotted and transcribed by VGC, Yoshida says: "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."
The soulsborne games are hard to get into if you don't enjoy a challenge. Now, there's a whole genre, soulslikes, but back in the day, FromSoftware was a small Japanese studio making niche games that a lot of people simply didn't understand.
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"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,” recalls Yoshida. "I said, 'this is crap. This is an unbelievably bad game.' So I put it aside."
Obviously, that was a mistake, one which Yoshida admits to. "We definitely dropped the ball from a publishing standpoint, including studio management side," he says. "We were not able to see the value of the product we were making."
Demon's Souls was published by Atlus in the US and Bandai Namco in Europe, and FromSoftware has continued its work with Bandai to this day, releasing Elden Ring and the spin-off sequel Nightreign with the publisher.
Sony clearly sees the value in the studio now, though, as it's become the majority shareholder in FromSoftware's parent company, Kadokawa, and it plans to invest more money so that more games can be made. It also published the Demon's Souls Remake worldwide, clearly learning from its past mistake.
Sony also had Bloodborne as a PS4 exclusive, so clearly there's no bad blood between it and FromSoftware anymore. That's my favorite FromSoft game, followed very closely by Armored Core 6. Now I just want a sequel or remaster of the gothic horror. Please.
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