14 DAY TRIAL // Demon’s Souls has managed to garner a hardcore following since it was launched in 2009 and one of the leading executives at Sony has admitted that the publisher has missed a great opportunity by not launching the game in North America and in Europe.
Shuhei Yoshida, who is the leader of the Sony Worldwide Studios, has told Game Informer that, “In short, that’s what happens to any game, especially games made in Japan since the majority of them aren’t relevant to markets outside of Japan.”
He added, “There are always processes between product development and marketing in US 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.”
Yoshida says that the team at Sony which has been handling publishing for Demon’s Souls was not able to get a vertical slice of the game during the development process and got the impression that the game would lack the quality necessary to perform well in Japan.
This would also mean that investment in localization and other changes required for a Western launch would not be justified from a commercial point of view.
The Sony executive admits that he only played the game for two hours and failed to make any progress, considering the experience a failure.
But he believes that the Japanese gaming industry has benefitted from the fact that Atlus and Namco Bandai have chosen to take up publishing duties in North America and in Europe, because it has exposed the public to a game that would otherwise be known by a small group of players.
Since Demon’s Souls the developers at From Software have launched the spiritual follow-up Dark Souls, which was published worldwide by Namco Bandai.