Demon’s Souls turned into a cult hit title when it released in the West, but Sony had passed on its rights to bring it over from Japan. Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida admits this was a mistake and reflected on how the situation came to pass.
“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,” said Yoshida. “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,” he noted. “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.”
“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. I should have been more stubborn talking to marketing people here in North America and Europe,” noted Yoshida, adding they still own the Demon’s Souls IP. “We never sell our IPs. Well, I should never say never, but it’s not our business. Our business is to grow our IP and we love Demon’s Souls. From Software is a very important business partner, so we’ll see.”
Source: Game Informer