Demon’s Souls sure caused a sensation back in 2009. As the first game in the Souls series, it introduced players to Hidetaka Miyazaki’s hard gameplay and fascinating game worlds, with a narrative based on showing rather than telling.
Miyazaki, of course, is the Japanese designer behind games like Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Elden Ring. But if Demon’s Souls had not succeeded, there would be no “Souls-like” genre of games to speak of. Thankfully, then, Demons Soul’s turned out to be a hit despite its maddening difficulty and flawed ideas like the world’s “dark and light tendency”, which made the game even harder if the player died too much…
Being such an iconic game, then, it’s not surprising that it got a full-fledged remake in late 2020, Demon’s Souls being a launch game for Sony’s then new PS5. The remake itself was rapturously received, with a 92 score it’s one of the best reviewed PlayStation games, and therefore the obvious choice to enjoy Miyazaki’s masterpiece instead of the old PS3 version.
But the question that’s been on many gamers minds since the remake launched in November 2020 is when would Demon’s Souls get a PC version? The Dark Souls games have all landed on PC, so it’s likely many were expecting Demon’s Souls to arrive on the platform sooner rather than later…
And initially this seemed to be the case as the launch trailer for the remake stated that the game is “also available on PC”, as seen in the image below.
So PC gamers would be deprived of roaming about Demon’s Souls medieval fantasy world of Boletaria and go toe to toe with its tough as nails bosses like the huge knight in armor seen in the image which accompanies this article.
Fast forward the clock to 2023, when news of a PC version of Demon’s Souls began circulating again. What prompted this was a massive leak from Nvidia’s cloud gaming service GeForce Now. A list of games emerged, amongst which were unreleased PC versions of PlayStation exclusives, including the Demon’s Souls remake as covered on Gamepressure. This led many to believe that Demon’s Souls was indeed headed for PC this time.
Rumors reached fever pitch in the summer when a known tipster revealed that Sony was planning to release one of its AAA exclusives on PC. This was followed by the supposed leak of a graphic which showed the launch date of the Demon’s Souls remake on PC, supposedly July 29, 2023. However, this graphic was later revealed to be a hoax, due to factual errors, and also the release date itself was suspect – major publishers like Sony don’t launch their games on a Saturday, which July 29 last year was.
So where does this leave things regarding the release of the Demon’s Souls remake for PC? Some would say that it’s an inevitability that Demon’s Souls gets a PC version. After all, other top-notch Sony exclusives like Horizon Zero Dawn and The Last of Us Part I have hit the PC, so why not the Demon’s Souls remake? Its appearance in the GeForce Now leaked list increases the probability of it releasing on PC someday, even if other high-profile games on the list like Ghost of Tsushima have not landed on the PC platform either.
Also, while the Dark Souls trilogy and Elden Ring have gotten PC versions, Miyazaki’s 2015 game Bloodborne is yet to arrive on PC, and might as well remain a PlayStation exclusive forever. And there’s no telling if Demon’s Souls will suffer the same fate too…
Either way, some have gotten the original Demon’s Souls game running on PC via emulation (at 4K resolution and 60 frames per second no less), but this is a grey area that many may not want to dabble in, even if it’s a last resort for those who own the 2009 original PS3 game on disc.
So the big wait for a PC version of Sony’s Demon’s Souls 2020 remake continues, even if there’s no light at the end of the tunnel yet, but there’s still hope that the game which gave birth to the Souls-like genre will one day hit the PC in some form or another.