FromSoftware is the Tokyo studio behind Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and Elden Ring. Those games turned "Souls-like" into a genre tag that half the industry now slaps on its own releases, and they made Hidetaka Miyazaki a name that sells games on its own. The studio didn't start there, though. FromSoftware has been around since 1986, and it spent close to two decades making dungeon crawlers and mech games before Demon's Souls flipped its whole identity in 2009.
The Souls era gets all the attention now, but the older catalog explains a lot about why FromSoftware games feel the way they do. A big chunk of that catalog also landed on Xbox, which is something most people forget.
FromSoftware was founded in Tokyo on November 1, 1986 by Naotoshi Zin, and for its first several years it made business software, not games. The jump to games came with the original PlayStation. King's Field launched in Japan in December 1994 as a first-person dungeon crawler built around slow, deliberate combat and a world that refused to explain itself.
The North American release history is a mess, since the second King's Field game came over simply titled King's Field, which has confused collectors for 30 years. Anyone who has played Demon's Souls can see the DNA right away. Hidden walls and an atmosphere built on dread instead of spectacle both started here.
The PlayStation and PlayStation 2 years filled out with games like Shadow Tower, Echo Night, and Eternal Ring, which launched alongside the PlayStation 2 in Japan. FromSoftware also made Lost Kingdoms for the GameCube, a card-based action RPG that Activision published in the West. None of these were huge sellers, but they kept the studio experimenting with dark fantasy long before it became a brand.
Kadokawa Corporation, the Japanese publishing and media company, acquired FromSoftware in 2014. Hidetaka Miyazaki became president of the studio that same year, which is wild when you consider he was directing games at the same time. In 2022, Sony Interactive Entertainment and Tencent both bought minority stakes in FromSoftware, and Sony later became Kadokawa's largest shareholder in early 2025.
FromSoftware still runs as its own studio under Kadokawa and self-publishes some games in Japan. Outside Japan, publishing has moved between partners depending on the project. Sony handled Demon's Souls and Bloodborne, Activision published Sekiro, Nintendo is splitting regional sales duties with FromSoftware on The Duskbloods, and Bandai Namco has been the partner on Dark Souls, Elden Ring, and Armored Core VI.
Armored Core launched on the PlayStation in 1997 and became the series FromSoftware leaned on for the next 15 years. The hook was building a mech piece by piece, then taking it out on missions for whichever corporation was paying. Sequels kept coming across the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 generations, including Armored Core 4, Armored Core: For Answer, Armored Core V, and Armored Core: Verdict Day in 2013.
Hidetaka Miyazaki actually got his start here. He joined FromSoftware in 2004, worked on Armored Core: Last Raven, then directed Armored Core 4 and Armored Core: For Answer before moving over to Demon's Souls. After Verdict Day, the series went silent for a full decade.
This is the part of FromSoftware history that doesn't get enough credit. During the original Xbox and early Xbox 360 years, FromSoftware made a run of exclusives that nobody else was making. Murakumo: Renegade Mech Pursuit hit the original Xbox in 2002, and Otogi: Myth of Demons followed, a stylish action game Sega published in North America where nearly every piece of the environment could be smashed apart. Otogi 2: Immortal Warriors came after it.
Metal Wolf Chaos is the one that has become a cult legend. Released on the original Xbox in 2004 and only in Japan, it puts the player in control of the President of the United States, Michael Wilson, piloting a mech to take back America from his own vice president. It's completely ridiculous and fully aware of it. Devolver Digital finally brought it west as Metal Wolf Chaos XD in 2019, remastered by General Arcade.
On Xbox 360, FromSoftware released Chromehounds with Sega in 2006, an online mech war game with persistent faction battles that shut its servers down in 2010. Enchanted Arms showed up early in the Xbox 360's life as a turn-based RPG, and Ninja Blade landed in 2009 with Microsoft publishing, a game packed so full of quick-time events that it still gets brought up whenever QTEs come up in conversation. FromSoftware also owned the Tenchu stealth series through this stretch, including Tenchu Z on Xbox 360, which matters later when Sekiro enters the picture.
Demon's Souls released on the PlayStation 3 in Japan in February 2009, published by Sony, with Atlus bringing it to North America later that year. Miyazaki took over a project that was struggling internally and reshaped it into something built on punishing difficulty, cryptic storytelling, and a strange kind of online play. Players could leave messages for each other, see bloodstains showing how someone else died, and invade other worlds.
Sony wasn't sold on it at first. Former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida has talked in interviews about how poorly his first session with Demon's Souls went. The game found its audience anyway through word of mouth, and that audience never left. The PlayStation 5 remake from 2020 came from Bluepoint Games, not FromSoftware, though it's built directly on Miyazaki's original design.
Dark Souls launched in 2011 on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 with Namco Bandai publishing, and it was the first time FromSoftware's Souls formula hit Xbox players. The interconnected world is what made it click. Lordran loops back on itself through shortcuts and elevators, and the moment Firelink Shrine connects to an area that seemed miles away is still a great piece of level design. The PC version, Prepare to Die Edition, followed in 2012, and Dark Souls Remastered came in 2018 with a Nintendo Switch release that marked the series' first stop on a Nintendo console.
Dark Souls II arrived in 2014 with Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura directing while Miyazaki was busy with Bloodborne. It's the black sheep of the trilogy for a lot of fans, mostly because Drangleic's world doesn't hang together the way Lordran does, but it has more content than either of the other two once Scholar of the First Sin and its DLC are counted. Dark Souls III brought Miyazaki back in 2016 and closed out the trilogy with faster combat borrowed from Bloodborne, plus the Ashes of Ariandel and The Ringed City expansions.
Bloodborne released on PlayStation 4 in March 2015, published by Sony and co-developed with Sony's Japan Studio. It swapped knights and shields for the gothic city of Yharnam, trick weapons, and a rally system that rewards players for hitting back immediately after taking damage. The story slowly shifts from werewolf hunting into full cosmic horror, and The Old Hunters DLC later that year is where a lot of the best lore lives.
Sony owns the Bloodborne IP, and as of this writing it has not announced a remaster, a PS5 version, or a PC port, despite years of rumors pointing at Bluepoint Games. It's the only Miyazaki-directed Souls game that has never been remade, remastered, or ported, which is the reason the community emulation scene around it on PC has gotten so much attention.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice launched in March 2019 with Activision publishing. Miyazaki has said the project started as an idea for a new Tenchu game before it grew into its own thing. It plays nothing like Dark Souls. There are no character classes, no multiplayer, and the whole combat system revolves around deflecting attacks to break an enemy's posture. Playing as Wolf feels like a rhythm game with a sword.
Sekiro won Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2019, the first time a FromSoftware game took the top prize there. FromSoftware also released Déraciné in 2018 between Bloodborne and Sekiro, a quiet PlayStation VR adventure game that almost nobody played.
Elden Ring released on February 25, 2022 with Bandai Namco publishing, on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC. It took the Souls structure and dropped it into an open world called the Lands Between, with Torrent the spectral steed for getting around and George R.R. Martin writing the mythology that happened before the game starts. Elden Ring won Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2022, and Bandai Namco and FromSoftware have since reported more than 30 million copies sold.
Shadow of the Erdtree arrived in June 2024 and sent players into the Realm of Shadow chasing Miquella. It was a full-size expansion rather than a handful of new bosses, and it sold more than five million copies in its first three days. The Tarnished Pack DLC added two new starting classes, new armor sets, and Torrent customization in August 2026 across PlayStation, Xbox, and PC, alongside the Switch 2 release.
Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon brought the mech series back in August 2023 after 10 years away. Masaru Yamamura directed it, and it's set on Rubicon 3, a planet torn apart by corporations fighting over a substance called Coral. FromSoftware folded in the boss design it learned from the Souls games, which is why the early helicopter fight became a wall for so many players. Multiple endings across repeated playthroughs give the story a lot more depth than first impressions suggest.
Elden Ring Nightreign launched on May 30, 2025 as a co-op roguelite spin-off directed by Junya Ishizaki. Three players drop into a shrinking map called Limveld, gear up over three in-game days, and take on a Nightlord at the end. It's a strange fit for FromSoftware on paper, and it moved more than two million copies in its first day anyway.
The Forsaken Hollows DLC followed on December 4, 2025, adding two new Nightfarers, new bosses, and a new Shifting Earth map. It crossed two million units shipped within days, even with mixed user reviews on Steam pointing at the new map layout and the amount of content for the price.
FromSoftware announced two Nintendo Switch 2 games in April 2025. Elden Ring Tarnished Edition was supposed to launch in 2025 but slipped to 2026 for performance work, and it finally released on August 28, 2026 with the base game and Shadow of the Erdtree included. Bandai Namco published it, and it's the first time Elden Ring has been on a Nintendo platform.
The Duskbloods is the bigger deal. It's a brand new PvPvE game directed by Miyazaki and exclusive to Switch 2, with up to eight players competing as Bloodsworn for the right to First Blood. Nintendo and FromSoftware are sharing sales responsibilities by region, and a network test ran from August 21 to 24, 2026. Kadokawa has kept it on the 2026 schedule in every financial report, but there was still no exact release date as of mid-October 2026.
A live-action Elden Ring movie is in production at A24, written and directed by Alex Garland, with a release date of March 3, 2028. Garland pitched the adaptation himself, and the film is being shot for IMAX. Kit Connor leads a cast that includes Ben Whishaw, Cailee Spaeny, Tom Burke, Jonathan Pryce, Nick Offerman, and Peter Serafinowicz, who already has a FromSoftware credit from Dark Souls II.
George R.R. Martin is a producer on the film. Garland isn't new to games either, since he wrote Enslaved: Odyssey to the West and served as story supervisor on DmC: Devil May Cry for Ninja Theory. I may not be a fan of Souls-like games, but after watching people play Elden Ring, I can't wait to see the movie.
FromSoftware made Demon's Souls, the Dark Souls trilogy, Bloodborne, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Elden Ring, and Elden Ring Nightreign. Its older catalog includes King's Field, Armored Core, Otogi, Metal Wolf Chaos, Chromehounds, and Ninja Blade.
Kadokawa Corporation has owned FromSoftware since 2014. Sony and Tencent bought minority stakes in the studio in 2022.
Yes. Hidetaka Miyazaki became president of FromSoftware in 2014 and still directs games, including The Duskbloods.
No. The 2020 Demon's Souls remake for PlayStation 5 was developed by Bluepoint Games. FromSoftware made the original 2009 PlayStation 3 game.
Demon's Souls came out in 2009, Dark Souls in 2011, Dark Souls II in 2014, Bloodborne in 2015, Dark Souls III in 2016, Sekiro in 2019, Elden Ring in 2022, and Elden Ring Nightreign in 2025.
Sony has not announced a Bloodborne PC port or remaster. The game has only ever been released on PlayStation 4.
The Duskbloods is scheduled for 2026 as a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive, but no exact release date had been announced as of mid-October 2026.
FromSoftware has not announced Elden Ring 2. The series continues with Elden Ring Nightreign, Elden Ring Tarnished Edition on Switch 2, and an A24 movie due March 3, 2028.