Demon's Souls

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About

Demon's Souls is an action role-playing video game developed by FromSoftware and directed by Hitedaka Miyazaki. The game was released for the PlayStation 3 in 2009 and though it initially sold poorly, positive word of mouth and critical reviews eventually led to the game becoming a success, leading to the creation of the highly successful Dark Souls series. A remake handled by Bluepoint Studios is planned to be a PlayStation 5 launch title.

History

Hitedaka Miyazaki took over direction for a struggling high-fantasy concept in development at FromSoftware at some point during the mid-2000s.^[1] As the concept was already struggling, Miyazaki took the opportunity to add bold ideas and focus on creating a highly-challenging video game to stand out in the industry.^[2] Miyazaki was coy with publishers Sony about the game's difficulty, believing they would insist on toning it down if they knew what he had planned. In 2008, a Demon's Souls was released at the Tokyo Game Show, where it was met with a disastrous response. Sony President Shuhei Yoshida called it an "unbelievably bad game" after struggling for two hours with it, unable to get past the opening area. The game released on February 5th, 2009 in Japan, as the negative feedback discouraged Sony from releasing it in western markets. It eventually released in North America on October 6th, 2009.

The initial disappointment Sony had with Demon's Souls led to the company freeing up the FromSoftware team to publish with other consoles. After the success of Dark Souls, the team approached Miyazaki to publish another exclusive title for them, leading to Bloodborne. ^[2]

Remake

A remake of the game developed by Bluepoint Studios will release as a PlayStation 5 launch title on November 12th, 2020.

Reception

Despite negative press prior to release, Demon's Souls ultimately reviewed very positively, scoring 89/100 on Metacritic.^[3] Many critics praised the high challenge it offered, comparing it favorably to older games which guided the player to become better through negative reinforcement. The game sold well too, moving over 134,000 units in Japan in 2009. It sold even better in North America, tripling estimates by April of 2010.^[4] It was awarded Game of the Year by Gamespot^[5] and PC World.^[6]

Online Presence

Online, the game's popularity dwarfs in comparison to the popularity of the Dark Souls series and Bloodborne, in part because it is the only game in the "Soulsborne" series to be released on PlayStation 3 as opposed to the PlayStation 4.^[7] However, news of the remake drew new attention to the game. On June 12th, 2020, VaatiVidya posted a video about the upcoming remake that gained over 1.3 million views (shown below, left). The same day, Iron Pineapple posted a video about the remake that also gained over 1.3 million views (shown below, right).

On July 9th, Matt McMuscles posted a "Wha Happun?" episode documenting the history of Demon's Souls development and how it helped launch the Souls series.

A subreddit^[8] for the game was created on December 14th, 2009, and has since gained over 41,000 members as of September 2020.