Ex-PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida has spoken about his history with the company, including his biggest career fumble with Demon's Souls. When he failed to understand the genius of its challenging, opaque gameplay, very few copies were printed, which led to Sony stopping him from signing Dark Souls due to his lack of support for its predecessor.
While giving the keynote speech at the Computer Entertainment Developers Conference, which has been translated by GamesRadar+, Yoshida, the former president of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, explains how he didn't understand Demon's Souls when he first played it.
"At that time I should have listened properly to [Hidetaka] Miyazaki-san [FromSoftware president and Demon's Souls director] and the in-house producer about what type of game they were making," he says. "I just thought they were making a kind of fantasy-themed action RPG.
"When I tried it, after two hours I was still standing in the spot at the very start of the game. I thought, 'why is this game so hard? Why is it so demanding?'" Sony was split by region at that time, and each region would pitch games developed on their home turfs to the others. Yoshida's pitch to America and Europe must have been pretty underwhelming as neither chose to pick it up.
"In Japan production started with 20,000 copies, the lowest number possible," Yoshida says. "And it wouldn't be sold in Europe or America." However, despite its limited release, Japanese gamers began to catch on to how special the game was, and word of mouth saw it gain success steadily. "At that time users online, on places like 2chan, were really excited about it saying things like, 'Isn't this actually really fun? Isn't this a god-tier game?'" he remembers.
Demon's Souls was picked up by Atlus in the US and Bandai Namco in Europe, but there was still a lack of trust in the series at Sony. "After that, the spiritual successor Dark Souls was announced," Yoshida starts. "Because we knew how amazing Demon's Souls was, and that in truth it was an amazing concept and a new type of game, we asked if we could have it, but Sony said 'You didn't really support Demon's Souls.'"
Reflecting on the fumble, Yoshida blames his history with platformers, where onboarding your players is vital, for his distaste of Demon's Souls' blatantly opaque systems. "I realized that it's important to truly understand the kind of user experience the developer is trying to create when they make a game," he reflects.
His opinion of Soulslikes has become a lot more positive over the years. To pay for his sins, Bloodborne was eventually signed with Sony, and Yoshida nabbed the platinum trophy. He even calls defeating Watchdog of the Old Lords live on stage the "highlight of his career."
