Demon's Souls was "a failure" before Miyazaki stepped up
"If my ideas failed, nobody would care."
From Software might have already made games that inspired the Souls series, but history wasn't adding up to much when Demon's Souls was first in development (around 2006). Internally, it was considered a failure.
It took handing the reins to a man who had joined the studio in 2004 to save it. He was unusual in the Japanese development scene. He'd left a much better paid IT job for US company Oracle to be there, but was 29 years old and had no prior experience making games. From Software had been one of the only places that would take him.
He started as a coder for the Armored Core series but when he heard about the troubled Demon's Souls project in development, Hidetaka Miyazaki was ready to make his name.
"Demon's Souls wasn't doing well," Miyazaki told Simon Parkin during a profile interview for The Guardian. "The project had problems and the team had been unable to create a compelling prototype. But when I heard it was a fantasy-action role-playing game, I was excited. I figured if I could find a way to take control of the game, I could turn it into anything I wanted. Best of all, if my ideas failed, nobody would care - it was already a failure."
He changed almost everything about it. We talked to Miyazaki in 2010, shortly before the European release of Demon's Souls, about the development of the game.
Today, many years later, Hidetaka Miyazaki is president of From Software - an "unprecedented" feat, remarked his script editor Ema Kodaka - and has just released his "masterpiece", Bloodborne, on PS4.
He remains unusual, hiding himself and his life from the limelight, the cameras and reporters. Yet at only 40 years old, his is a name we're likely to hear about for years to come - praise the sun.
