A reliable PlayStation leaker recently stated that Demon’s Souls, the PS5 remake of the PS3 FromSoftware game that started it all, may never get a PC release. This would be unusual because Sony has increasingly leaned into the additional revenue stream offered by PC ports.
In the past year alone, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Lego Horizon Adventures, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, Until Dawn, God of War Ragnarok, Helldivers 2, Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut, and Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition have all made the jump to PC. The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered is next up, with a PC release scheduled for April.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has also recently hit PC and, though it wasn’t published by Sony, it was a PS5 exclusive until now.
Demon’s Souls’ Launch Was Over Four Years Ago
But it doesn’t take an insider to know that Sony’s approach to Demon’s Souls has been strange. As games take longer and longer to make, Sony has taken to strategically squeezing its exclusives, getting a big, buzzy launch on PS5 before riding a secondary wave of PC purchases once the initial hype has died down. It makes perfect sense to me (though making smaller games on shorter timelines is what it would take to actually address the heart of the issue).
Given this business model, it’s notable that Bluepoint Games’ 2020 remake of Demon’s Souls hasn’t been ported to PC. As the only game you couldn’t also play on PS4 at launch, Demon’s Souls was the first PS5 exclusive. It also performed fairly well, with 1.4 million copies sold less than a year after release.
It would be nice to have sales data on the game from the last three-plus years, but such is the games industry.
When you add the fact that Bloodborne — a game that PC players have been begging for since its 2015 launch– is still only available on PS4, it begins to seem like something deeply weird is going on between Sony and FromSoftware. Does Sony want to differentiate FromSoft’s PlayStation releases from the rest of its catalogue by limiting them to a single platform? Is there some profit split behind the scenes that would render the ports less worthwhile for either party? Do Sony and FromSoft hate money?
Unlikely. Exhibit A: All those Sony PC ports.
Does Miyazaki Just Care Too Much?
Shuhei Yoshida, the former president of SIE Worldwide Studios who retired from SIE last month, offered another option on a recent episode of the Kinda Funny Gamescast. Yoshida told host Greg Miller that his theory for why Bloodborne had not received a remaster or PC port was that “Miyazaki-san really, really loved Bloodborne and what he created. I think he is interested, but he’s so successful, and he’s so busy, he cannot do it himself, but he doesn’t want anyone else to touch it. The PlayStation team respects his wish.”
Yoshida could be right, but it doesn’t explain why Demon’s Souls is still MIA on PC, four-plus years after launch. Is Miyazaki equally protective of Demon’s Souls, too? He clearly doesn’t hold all of his games back from PC release, as Dark Souls, Dark Souls 2, Dark Souls 3, Sekiro, and Elden Ring have all come to the platform. In fact, since the Souls era began at FromSoftware, only three of Miyazaki’s games have missed a PC release. And, guess what? They were all published by Sony. Demon’s Souls, Bloodborne, and the little-remembered PSVR game, Deracine have all remained exclusive to PlayStation platforms.
So, what does it mean? I have no idea. But I hope, for the sake of all the frustrated FromSoft fans, that we get an answer someday.
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