FromSoftware

The short answer

FromSoftware is a Japanese game developer based in Tokyo. Its own company profile gives the date of foundation as 1 November 1986 and describes the business as planning, developing and distributing video games. The Tokyo head office is in Shinjuku Front Tower in Kita-Shinjuku, and a second studio operates in Fukuoka. That profile lists Hidetaka Miyazaki as Representative Director and President and records 456 employees as of May 2025, which makes this a mid-sized studio rather than a large publisher.

The studio is best known for a run of difficult action role-playing games, but its history is longer and wider than that run suggests. It spent its first years writing business software, moved into games in 1994, and built a mech franchise before the Souls line existed. That background explains the studio's habit of keeping older series alive alongside its most famous work, and why its own timeline reads as a dated list of releases rather than a highlight reel.

From business software to games

The company's history page says it was established in Sasazuka, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, in 1986 for the development of business application software, and that it entered the game market in response to the launch of Sony's PlayStation. In 1994 it released the 3D real-time role-playing game King's Field. That release is the point the studio marks as its entry into game software, a deliberate move rather than a slow drift toward it.

Armored Core arrived in 1997, a 3D mech battle game that the history page credits with settling the studio's footing in game development through three-dimensional world creation. That release began a long-running series for the studio. The decade that followed was mostly about platforms and partners: PlayStation 2 in 2000, GameCube and Xbox in 2002, publishing another studio's game in 2003, mobile in 2004, and the purchase of the Tenchu series rights from Activision in 2004.

Demon's Souls, Dark Souls and Bloodborne

Demon's Souls came in February 2009, developed with Sony and released by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The company's history notes that it took an Award for Excellence at the 2009 Japan Game Awards. Dark Souls followed in September 2011 as a joint development with Namco Bandai Games, and the same page records one and a half million units sold worldwide as of November 2011, a modest figure for a game that went on to define a genre.

Bloodborne was released in March 2015 for PlayStation 4, developed by the studio and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. In October of that year the studio opened a second location in Fukuoka to add development capacity, and it moved into the Xbox One and Nintendo 3DS markets in the same period. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice followed in March 2019, developed with Activision, and the history page gives it two million units sold worldwide within ten days of release.

Elden Ring and the numbers that followed

Elden Ring was released in February 2022 as a joint development with Bandai Namco Entertainment. The studio's history records one million units sold in Japan and twelve million worldwide by March 2022, then twenty million worldwide by February 2023. Its expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree, launched in June 2024 and passed five million units within the first three days. That run made the game the studio's largest commercial success, well beyond anything it had shipped before.

A publisher release dated 24 July 2025 puts the latest picture in one place: the original Elden Ring had sold more than thirty million units, Shadow of the Erdtree had passed ten million, and the standalone co-operative game Nightreign, released in May 2025, had passed five million. Both later titles are built on the Elden Ring world rather than starting a new series, and those are the most recent official totals.

Ownership and leadership

In April 2014 the studio announced that Kadokawa Corporation had acquired eighty per cent of its stock, and that May the Kadokawa group took full ownership of the company. Its current company profile names Kadokawa as the main shareholder. In September 2022 a third-party allotment brought in Sixjoy Hong Kong Limited and Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc., so the ownership today is Kadokawa plus two minority holders rather than a single owner.

Kadokawa's own group site lists FromSoftware among its game companies, beside Spike Chunsoft and ACQUIRE, and describes it as established in 1986 as a business application developer that began game development in 1994. The studio's own profile names Hidetaka Miyazaki as Representative Director and President and Naotoshi Zin as Advisor. Neither official page states the year either took up their position, and neither of them names the person who founded the company.

Quick facts

Founded: 1 November 1986, per the company profile. Headquarters: Shinjuku Front Tower, Kita-Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, with a second studio in Fukuoka. Owner: Kadokawa Corporation as main shareholder, with Sixjoy Hong Kong Limited and Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc. also listed in the same profile. Leadership: Hidetaka Miyazaki, Representative Director and President, with Naotoshi Zin listed as Advisor.

Key games: King's Field (1994), Armored Core (1997), Demon's Souls (2009), Dark Souls (2011), Bloodborne (2015), Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (2019), Elden Ring (2022), Elden Ring Nightreign (2025). Official numbers with dates: Elden Ring above 30 million units, announced 24 July 2025; Shadow of the Erdtree above 10 million and Nightreign above 5 million, same announcement; 456 employees as of May 2025.

Why does FromSoftware keep returning to the same kind of game?

The studio's most visible titles share a structure: cautious exploration, punishing combat, and lore delivered in fragments rather than cutscenes. That consistency is not only a creative preference. Each entry builds on systems the team already understands, which keeps development risk down and lets the studio reuse a design vocabulary instead of starting from nothing every cycle. It also keeps a recognisable identity attached to the name on the box.

The pattern carries commercial weight too. FromSoftware sells these games to an audience that knows what it is buying, and the publisher's own announcements lean on that expectation by grouping the base game, its expansion and the co-operative spin-off together. The studio does step outside the formula, most clearly with the Armored Core series, but its own timeline records those as the exceptions rather than the rule, and it returns to the shared world each time with a new audience in mind.

Games

• Another Century's Episode
• Another Century's Episode 2
• Another Century's Episode 3: The Final
• Another Century's Episode Portable
• Another Century's Episode: R
• Armored Core
• Armored Core 2
• Armored Core 2: Another Age
• Armored Core 3
• Armored Core V
• Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon
• Armored Core: For Answer
• Armored Core: Formula Front
• Armored Core: Master of Arena
• Armored Core: Nexus
• Armored Core: Nine Breaker
• Armored Core: Project Phantasma
• Armored Core: Verdict Day
• Bloodborne
• Bloodborne: The Old Hunters
• Chromehounds
• Dark Souls II
• Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin
• Dark Souls III
• Dark Souls III: Ashes of Ariandel
• Demon's Souls
• Déraciné
• Echo Night
• Echo Night 2: The Lord of Nightmares
• Echo Night: Beyond
• Elden Ring
• Elden Ring Nightreign
• Elden Ring Nightreign: The Forsaken Hollows
• Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree Deluxe Edition
• Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree Edition
• Enchanted Arms
• Eternal Ring
• Evergrace
• Frame Gride
• King's Field
• King's Field II
• King's Field III
• King's Field IV
• Kuon
• Lost Kingdoms
• Lost Kingdoms II
• Metal Wolf Chaos
• Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn
• Monster Hunter Diary: Poka Poka Airou Village
• Murakumo: Renegade Mech Pursuit
• Ninja Blade
• Otogi 2: Immortal Warriors
• Otogi: Myth of Demons
• Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
• Shadow Assault: Tenchu
• Shadow Tower
• Shadow Tower Abyss
• Silent Line: Armored Core
• Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor
• Tenchu Z
• Tenchu: Fatal Shadows
• Tenchu: Time of the Assassins
• Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven
• The Adventures of Cookie & Cream
• Yoshitsune Eiyuuden: The Story of Hero Yoshitsune

Questions people ask