Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida admits that he thought Demon's Souls a game Sony had the opportunity to publish was "crap
unbelievably bad."
Speaking to Game Informer, Yoshida said that when he first saw Demon's Souls it was a mess, with framerate problems and no network features, and that as such Sony opted against picking up the publishing rights.
"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," he said. "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 of the game.
"I said, 'This is crap. This is an unbelievably bad game.' So I put it aside."
The final product, of course, was much better, and Atlus, in North America, and Namco in Europe picked up the publishing rights to the game, which far outstripped initial sales expectations. Sony admitted in 2010 that its failure to publish the game was "a mistake."
