Nobody expected Demon's Souls to be the hit it was, least of all Sony, the game's publisher in Japan. When Atlus decided to publish the game in North America, it took a risk -- one that paid off. The duty of publishing the sequel, Dark Souls, would then go to Namco Bandai.

Does Sony regret passing on publishing Demon's Souls in North America? Senior VP Shuhei Yoshida thinks so. He told Game Informer the company passed on the game after seeing an earlier build of the game. "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."

But still, even after a few hours with the final product, Yoshida remarked that he just wasn't able to see the value in the game. "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 at the game. I said, 'This is crap. This is an unbelievably bad game.' So I put it aside." In the end, Yoshida admitted Sony "dropped the ball from a publishing standpoint" and was not able to "see the value of the product."