Speaking on the Sacred Symbols Podcast, Shuhei Yoshida, the former president of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, has revealed that FromSoftware wasn’t keen on working with Sony on the follow-up to Demon’s Souls (which became Dark Souls) as they were disappointed with how the format holder treated the game.
While Demon’s Souls gained a cult following and established the Souls brand, its original release back in 2009 wasn’t localised by Sony due to its high difficulty and negative reception during early playtests. Instead, Atlus handled distribution duties in the US and Bandai Namco handled things in Europe.
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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. We have huge respect for Miyazaki and we were able to work with them again. Bloodborne is one of his best games.
Sony and FromSoftware would team up again for the 2015 PS4 magnum opus Bloodborne, which remains one of the best games available for that console and something that fans are eager to see remade or at least given an official 60 FPS patch. Demon’s Souls itself would get another lease of life thanks to the excellent Demon’s Souls Remake from Bluepoint Games on PS5 in 2020.
Yoshida has been quite forthcoming in his latest round of interviews. For example, during a chat with VentureBeat he said it would ‘feel right‘ for the PS6 to come out in 2028, and also revealed that he had played the cancelled The Last of Us Online game from Naughty Dog, which he described as ‘great.’
[Source – Sacred Symbols Podcast via VGC]