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+---- Thread: Demon's Souls: Miyazaki's start and initial game reception (/thread-2798.html)
Demon's Souls: Miyazaki's start and initial game reception - G-Haven - 10-20-2015
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-04-01-demons-souls-was-a-failure-before-miyazaki-stepped-up
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/31/bloodborne-dark-souls-creator-hidetaka-miyazaki-interview
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=26079
http://www.technobuffalo.com/2014/05/22/dark-souls-hidetaka-miyazaki-promoted-to-president-of-from-software/ - Miyazaki becoming president of From Software.
Hidetaka Miyazaki, director of Demon's Souls and eventual president of From Software, got his start at From Software in 2004. He had originally worked for a US IT company called Oracle Corporation, until he came into contact with some old college friends that suggested some games for him to play, one of which was Ico. Miyazaki had considered applying to a game development studio when he was nearing graduation, but ended up at the aforementioned IT company. After playing the game, Miyazaki said in an interview "That game awoke me to the possibilities of the medium [...] I wanted to make one myself."
However, Miyazaki was 29 years old at the time, too old for graduate positions and also too inexperienced for other companies, until he found a position in From Software as a coder for the Armored Core series in 2004. While working on that series, he had heard about another project in development in the studio, which was Demon's Souls. According to Miyazaki, "Demon’s Souls wasn’t doing well [...] 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." Miyazaki was eventually assigned to the game and reportedly "changed everything about it."
The initial launch of the game was not favorable, as it only sold 20,000 copies in the first week, far fewer than Sony had hoped. However, good word of the game began to spread rapidly and within a few months, the game had sold over 100,000 copies in Japan, which then prompted a Western release of the game, garnering another 150,000 sales in the first month.