Former SIE executive Shuhei Yoshida, who now works as an advisor to indie game publishers and developers, recently held a keynote speech at CEDEC 2026, one of Japan’s biggest developer conferences. As reported by 4Gamer, Yoshida reminisced about the development of over twenty “amazing” titles he has encountered throughout his career, with one of them notably being Demon’s Souls – the 2009 title that jump-started FromSoftware’s worldwide prestige and gave origin to the soulslike genre.
While most of the games Yoshida brought up during his speech were projects he’d been actively involved in, that “unfortunately” was not the case with Demon’s Souls, he said. He first encountered the game mid-development after returning to Japan from the US in the fall of 2008 to support the development of the PS4. At the time, he understood Demon’s Souls to simply be an action RPG with a fantasy setting. When he decided to try out the build himself, he says he made virtually no progress even after two hours of playing and came away thinking “what an unfriendly game.”
With the game generating little hype pre-launch, Sony (SCE at the time)’s western divisions decided not to publish Demon’s Souls, and it became clear that the initial domestic shipment of 20,000 units would not allow the studio to break even.
However, Yoshida says FromSoftware remained devoted to polishing the game thoroughly, finally releasing it in February 2009 after extending the development period. Word of the game being “incredibly fun” soon spread among Japanese gamers, leading to sales picking up. This piqued the interest of Atlus and Bandai Namco, who offered to publish the game in North America and Europe respectively, contributing to Demon’s Souls international success.
By the time FromSoftware began planning their next hit Dark Souls, Yoshida says he had come to understand that the studio was pursuing a fundamentally new type of game built around a different design philosophy, not the orthodox style of action game that eases players into its mechanics. The realization came late, however, as FromSoftware went on to decline SCE’s offer to publish Dark Souls, citing the lack of support for Demon’s Souls. Looking back on FromSoftware’s subsequent worldwide success, Yoshida commented, “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.”
In the following years, FromSoftware has largely continued to collaborate with Bandai Namco Entertainment for overseas publishing (which has been causing some headaches to its parent company Kadokawa), though it did briefly reunite with Sony for the release of Bloodborne on the PS4 as well as the experimental VR title Déraciné.
