There's a timeline where Dark Souls was a PlayStation exclusive, but Sony lost out on the chance because it wouldn't publish Demon's Souls in North America
Overview & Key Takeaways
Things could always be worse.
First reported by 4Gamer (with translation by Automaton), former Sony Interactive Entertainment executive Shuhei Yoshida recently spoke about Sony's decision not to publish Demon's Souls in North America, which led FromSoftware to partner with Bandai Namco on its breakout 2011 hit, Dark Souls.
Yoshida provided the keynote address at this year's CEDEC industry conference in Japan, where he spoke about some of his experiences working close to the top of Sony's games business. Sony published Demon's Souls in Japan—hence its console-exclusive status to this day—but declined to bring the game oversees.
According to Yoshida, Demon's Souls' initial Japanese run only consisted of 20,000 copies shipped, and it was not expected to break even on development costs. Trying the game for himself in 2008, a year before launch, Yoshida said he failed to make much progress after two hours, and described his conclusion as "what an unfriendly game." To be fair to Yoshida, this is more or less identical to my first experience with Demon's Souls as well.
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But Demon's Souls went on to have strong sales and word of mouth in Japan, leading Atlus and Bandai Namco to handle its distribution in other regions. Realizing that FromSoft was onto something special, Yoshida said that Sony offered to publish its next game, Dark Souls, but it was too little, too late. FromSoft gave Sony's lack of support on Demon's Souls as a reason for declining the offer, and Bandai Namco would go on to reap the rewards, publishing the Dark Souls, Elden Ring, and Armored Core series.
For his part, though, Yoshida seems to have a similar conclusion to the one I do about this situation: “I’d like to believe—although it might just be wishful thinking—that our not remaining involved ultimately led to a better outcome for the game industry and for gamers.”
Sony would famously get another bite at the FromSoft apple with 2015's Bloodborne, a highlight of the studio's catalogue that remains trapped not only on PlayStation, but the PS4 specifically. If Sony'd had a stronger relationship with FromSoft from the beginning, it's possible the studio would have never broken containment from PlayStation, and PC gaming would be poorer for it.
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