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Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida has admitted the firm’s decision against publishing Demon’s Souls across North America and Europe was a mistake.

“Absolutely! Tell me about it! 100 percent agree!” he said, when it was suggested that an error had been made by the firm in regards to the western publishing rights for the From Software RPG, during an interview with GameInformer. 

When asked how and why the decision was made, he simply said it’s “what happens to any game.”

“Especially games made in Japan since the majority of them aren’t relevant to markets outside of Japan. There are always processes between product development and marketing in U.S. and Europe. All things considered, it’s part of the issue of making games in Japan. The game development in Japan typically is made horizontally where all assets are made in parallel, so it’s difficult to figure out what the final state of the game is going to be.

“The western style game development is typically a vertical slice. So in the very early process, the team tried to create a small piece of the experience that resembles the final product. What happened with Demon’s Souls was until very late in the game’s development, we were not able to play the game through. There were framerate issues and the network was not up and running. We underestimated the quality of the game and to be honest, the media in Japan did the same.”

Yoshida then spoke of his first personal experience with the game which, surprisingly, wasn’t too positive.

“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.” So I put it aside."

He added: “Luckily, third party publishers, Atlus in North America and Namco in Europe [stepped in], and it really became a great hit outside of Japan.

“We definitely dropped the ball from a publishing standpoint, including studio management side. We were not able to see the value of the product we were making.”

Asked if the firm has learned from its mistakes, Yoshida stated, “Game development is a tough process. We start and stop many games. Some get made to the finish, but we have to make decisions. I hope we won’t make the same mistake again.”

Demon’s Souls first launched in 2009 and, despite the fact a direct sequel is yet to be announced, From Software released spiritual successor Dark Souls across multiple platforms in October last year.

 

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