Post
The Tokyo studio that made 'difficulty' a genre by accident, then a religion on purpose.
Founded in 1986 as a business software company, FromSoftware drifted into games with King's Field in 1994 and stayed weird for two decades. Hidetaka Miyazaki joined in 2004, took over the troubled Demon's Souls project in 2006, and reshaped the studio around oblique storytelling, punishing combat, and trust in the player. Now owned by Kadokawa, From punches far above its ~400-person headcount: Elden Ring sold 25M+ in its first year, the Soulsborne lineage spawned an entire subgenre, and Miyazaki's design philosophy is studied like film school auteurism.
Example
Bloodborne (2015) was a PS4-exclusive collaboration with Sony Japan Studio that pivoted From's 'tank and shield' formula into aggressive, rally-driven combat. Sony Japan Studio dissolved in 2021; Bloodborne still has no PC port, no remaster, no sequel — and a cult that asks for one weekly.
Why it matters
FromSoftware proved that 'fun' is not the same as 'easy,' and that mainstream audiences will pay full price for hostile, opaque games if the craft is honest. Every soulslike, every 'no-handholding' indie, every cryptic boss fight in modern AAA owes them rent.
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