This is obviously PR because Shu thought Demons Souls was one of the worst games he'd ever played
Before it released that is. The game was pretty rough in the full release, pre release before it all came together its not hard to imagine it being pretty bad. He has changed his opinion
I feel one of Sony’s biggest software mistakes this generation was passing on publishing Demon’s Souls in North America and Europe.
Absolutely! Tell me about it! 100 percent agree!
How did it happen? Was it as simple as this game wasn’t going to sell? How involved were you?
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. 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.
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.
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.