Sony Worldwide Studios head Shuhei Yoshida has admitted that not publishing Demon's Souls in North America and Europe was one of the company's biggest mistakes this generation.
In an recent interview with Game Informer, Yoshida said that Sony "dropped the ball" by passing on the game's Western publishing rights, explaining that they were unable to fairly judge the quality of the finished product.
"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 said that the development process meant early playtests presented an unstable, buggy, and ultimately bad 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.' So I put it aside."
Of course, Demon's Souls was eventually published in North America and Europe by Atlus and Namco Bandai and went on to garner widespread praise from critics and gamers alike.
That's a move Sony is not likely to repeat, Yoshida said, explaining that Sony will be holding onto the Demon's Souls IP for the foreseeable future.
"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."
Despite that exclusivity arrangement, last year From Software and Namco Bandai released a "spiritual successor," Dark Souls, on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
