Japanese publishers who believe their niche game cannot become a multimillion-dollar selling machine in the west should take a closer look at what the Souls series (“shinige[1]” genre) accomplished. Spurred by cult popularity, the series quickly grew from having a niche appeal to becoming a commercial hit.

This success story begins in 2010 when the game Demon’s Souls, created by Hidetaka Miyazaki, was released as a PS3 exclusive. Despite coming to the U.S. market almost a year late, and well over a year later to the European market, it got numerous awards and sold decently, with 1.84 million units worldwide according to VGChartz.

However, things started moving in an interesting direction when that game’s spiritual successor called Dark Souls, hit the shelves. Initially undecided about an American and European release, Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc. soon made the correct strategic move to take the risk and release the game overseas. The results were more than worthwhile.

  • Dark Souls sold ~2,828,000 units worldwide.
  • Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition sold ~2,765,000 units worldwide.
  • Dark Souls 2 sold ~2,311,000 units worldwide.
  • Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin has sold ~600,000 units worldwide.
  • That’s a total of ~8,504,000 units sold.(Purchese 2015)

When you add to that the always increasing numbers, since these figures were published in 2015 — and add the sales of the latest iteration of the series which is Dark Souls 3 with 3 million units sold; and the grand total is around 13 million units sold, confirmed by the company itself. (Romano 2016)

Now pause for a second and imagine for a second if someone at Bandai Namco Europe or Bandai Namco America would have recommended HQ in Japan not to release such a niche game overseas, for fear of poor sales due to the very slow pace and the very visible Japanese-like features the game had. What a disaster for the company and for Japanese gaming that would have been! This one is more of a gut feel, as market research would have probably dictated to not release this one overseas. But this is why one must always be very careful in too easily dismissing certain types of games from trying their luck in other markets.

The game was a triumph because of some key decisions. First, on the development side, the studio FromSoftware was not trying to please a western crowd; rather, they were simply creating games they enjoyed making. The creator of the game confirms this by saying that Western appeal was not really a concern for them, and that they kept making the games they always enjoyed playing.

Then the online community was key, because the developers had the great idea of not giving the players any instructions on how to play the game, including what to do, where to go, how to navigate, and how to fight. As a result, they forced an entire community to come to life out of necessity, in order to help one another complete the game.

This happened mostly on the internet, through forums, YouTube videos, and the like. Ultimately, this led to the creation of a Wikipedia page, a Wikia page, and many other dedicated pages thanks to everyone’s contributions. Now, if this is not the adoption of a niche game in massive scale, I don’t know what is. This is proof that any game can succeed and that we can only know by trying.

Second, the multiplayer aspect of the game gave it what every other Japanese game at the time, and still today, is lacking in comparison to North American games. It gave it longevity, the competitive aspect, and the addictive aspect that all hardcore and core Western gamers crave for. What a stroke of genius! The person responsible for the invention of the multiplayer aspect of Demon’s Souls should receive some sort of award for their astounding idea to create a seamless PvE and PvP experience within the single player world itself. This idea single-handedly propelled the game from niche to worldwide phenomenon.

What is so special about the success of the Souls games is that they are the only ones to have successfully managed to capture and literally steal consumers from PvP online multiplayer powerhouses like the Call of Dutys. They possess all the requirements Western multiplayer games are known for and gamers love, which are: competition, communication, and fun. The Souls games also inadvertently showed that success has no direct correlation with the shooter or FPS genres, and that TPS (third person) is as capable if not more so, to have a complex, addictive and satisfying multiplayer experience, and to make millions in sales and expand consumer adoption.

The quality of the single player and multiplayer also comes as no surprise, since these are the same people who worked on the amazing Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven for the PS2, where the local multiplayer was considered by many to be of great quality. Furthermore, in the Dark Souls franchise, one can observe certain features of the game that remained from the Tenchu IP (mainly the item interface at the bottom left of the screen). Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven’s local multiplayer was so good for the time that if online play was already a thing back then, the IP would have made millions more in sales.

Third, the marketing for the game was quite good and prevalent in most metropolitan hubs around the world. The fact that it was branded as the most difficult game in history played a big role in its sales and actually worked for it and not against.

Like I said, as long as a consistent marketing message is being spread through cost-effective channels, a game can succeed in securing decent word of mouth which will then take care of the rest. A substantial amount of the game’s promotion was effectively done by the players themselves, who keep in touch through YouTube and Twitch platforms.

Game streams of Dark Souls were being made in which the users would talk about the soon release of Dark Souls 2 and how excited they were, and why everyone else should be excited as well. Same phenomenon of course for Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3. These streams all attracted millions of views. Out of those millions, you can rest assured that a good percentage would purchase the game.

The quality of the games themselves played a big part in this as well with their amazing mechanics and boss fights. Now, this is a given in Japanese games, but here the bar was pushed even further, with some of the most epic battles a gamer will ever play on an entertainment platform. Western players were shocked by the beauty and fantastical scenery displayed in them. And with the integration of a PvP component, suddenly the first-person shooters that dominated the industry for the past decade no longer looked as interesting.

In fact, this was probably the first Japanese game brand that sold more than 40% of all their copies on PC. When the game originally came out on Steam, sales were so high that they ran out of Steam keys, a record for a Japanese game on PC. This proves my view that PC gamers enjoy Japanese games as much as console gamers do and should no longer be ignored as they were in the past.

A shift is definitely occurring. Tired of North American franchises, many Western gamers wish to come back to the “Japanese experience.” But they have to be reminded what that is, what it entails, and where they can find it. They need constant push marketing in order to remember.

[1] Shinige: Japanese term to describe games where dying is almost inevitable and where the player is encouraged to learn from their previous deaths (mistakes) and get better along the way.