'An Unbelievably Bad Game': How the Souls Series Became a Phenomenon
Sony's own president gave up on Demon's Souls in its first room. Seventeen years later, its descendants have sold tens of millions, won Game of the Year and invented a genre. Here is the story of the games.
Before Demon's Souls came out, Shuhei Yoshida, then a senior Sony executive, sat down to try it. He could not get past the starting area, and he later admitted he thought it was "an unbelievably bad game". Sony published it in Japan, and modest sales in Japan, about 39,000 copies in its first week, seemed to confirm his fears.
It turned out to be the start of one of the most influential series of the century. Its spiritual successors, the Dark Souls games, have shipped more than 39 million copies, and Elden Ring alone passed 30 million by April 2025. This year Elden Ring reached Switch 2, and a film directed by Alex Garland is set for March 3, 2028. Here is how a project nobody believed in created the "soulslike".
A troubled project, and a director with nothing to lose
Demon's Souls launched in Japan on February 5, 2009 for the PS3, published by Sony Computer Entertainment Japan. Internally, the project had been in trouble, without a coherent vision, when Hidetaka Miyazaki took it over. Miyazaki later said that because it was already struggling, he felt free to take it in any direction he wanted.
He chose difficulty, mystery and a very unusual kind of online play. Players could leave short messages on the ground for strangers, warning of traps or lying about treasure. They could see the ghostly last moments of other players' deaths, and be invaded by real people.
Atlus released it in North America on October 6, 2009, where it sold 150,000 copies in its first month, far beyond expectations. By 2011 it had passed one million worldwide. Its servers closed in February 2018, but by then the formula had already taken over.
Dark Souls and the age of "you died"
Dark Souls (2011, PS3 and Xbox 360), published by Bandai Namco, took the idea into an interconnected world where shortcuts looped back to bonfires and every area seemed to fit into every other. Its reputation for difficulty became a marketing slogan, but players stayed for the sense of mastery and the hidden, fragmented story.
Dark Souls II (2014) was directed by others, with Miyazaki supervising. He returned for Bloodborne (2015), a faster, Victorian-gothic PS4 exclusive whose aggressive combat later shaped Dark Souls III (2016). Dark Souls III sold more than 10 million copies by 2020. In 2019, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice swapped stats for precise sword-parrying and won Game of the Year at The Game Awards.
Elden Ring: the open world
Everything came together on February 25, 2022. Elden Ring placed the Souls formula in a vast open world, with mythology written by George R.R. Martin, author of A Song of Ice and Fire, and the main story by Miyazaki. Players who hit a wall could simply ride away on their spirit horse and come back stronger.
It scored 94 to 96 on Metacritic, won Game of the Year at The Game Awards on December 8, 2022, and became Bandai Namco's fastest-selling game. Its expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree (June 20, 2024), sold more than 10 million copies on its own. A multiplayer spin-off, Elden Ring Nightreign, followed in 2025, and the Switch 2 version, Tarnished Edition, launched on August 28, 2026 and scored 90.
Why it matters
"Soulslike" is now a genre label. Dozens of games from studios around the world, including Korean hits like Lies of P, borrow the bonfire checkpoints, stamina-based combat and cryptic storytelling these games made famous. Few series have changed how big games are designed so much in so little time.
WGC's take: the most important lesson of the Souls series is about respect. These games trust players to learn, fail and work things out, and millions of people turned out to want exactly that.
What to play next: Elden Ring is the easiest entry point because the open world lets you choose your fights. For a tighter challenge, try Dark Souls III or Sekiro, both on PC and consoles.