„This is crap. This is an unbelievably bad game.” Sony doubted first soulslike from Dark Souls devs, leaving FromSoftware disappointed
Before the release of Demon's Souls, Sony doubted the success of FromSoftware's game. For this reason, the developers didn't cooperate with the Japanese corporation in the development of the first Dark Souls.
Today, Demon’s Souls is considered an extremely important action RPG game - the one that started the soulslike subgenre and to some extent still serves as a model to be followed by other developers. Moreover, the game from 2009 established FromSoftware studio's position in the global game development market. However, not everyone remembers that the beginnings of Demon's Souls weren't so perfect.
In February 2009, the game was released in Japan, but its sales weren't very impressive. For this reason, the company cooperating with Sony developers didn't want to lose money on translating the title into English and releasing it outside the country. Despite the lack of official distribution, the Japanese version of Demon’s Souls ended up in the hands of more enthusiastic Western players, who received FromSoftware's project very positively. Thanks to this, the devs started working with Atlus and Bandai Namco companies, which undertook the release of the soulslike in the West.
During a chat on the Sacred Symbols+ podcast (via VGC), former PlayStation head Shuhei Yoshida revealed that once the game gained international success, Sony reached out to FromSoftware with an offer to develop a sequel. However, the developers refused to cooperate and, with the help of Bandai Namco, they released the equally great action RPG Dark Souls. Even though the games are very similar to each other and one could stubbornly connect them narratively, the "sequel" had to bear a different title because Sony owned the rights to the Demon’s Souls brand.
FromSoftware was already working on the Demon’s Souls sequel, but they were so disappointed with how PlayStation treated them, we wanted to work with them again but they passed on it- explained Yoshida.
However, the disagreements between the companies were successfully resolved, resulting in Bloodborne, released in 2015.
We have huge respect for Miyazaki and we were able to work with them again. Bloodborne is one of his best games - he added.
It's worth mentioning that Yoshida was one of the people who didn't like Demon’s Souls. So in 2012 he recalled his adventure with the game:
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. I said: ‘This is crap. This is an unbelievably bad game.’
