What is The Future for FromSoftware?
The legendary Japanese developers are moving into a new era, but what does that mean for them?
I imagine that producing the biggest game in the history of your company changes things for you. Japan’s FromSoftware, Inc. have been around for nearly 40 years, initially as a developer of business applications before pivoting to video games due the success of their first title King’s Field. In the years following, the company would experiment with a wide stretch of titles, most successfully at the time with their mecha combat series Armored Core.
The rest of the story you likely already know. In 2009, the company released Demon’s Souls, headed by game director (and eventually company president) Hidetaka Miyazaki, which became a cult hit. That cult would grow into a full blown religious order two years later with the release of the follow-up and spiritual sequel, Dark Souls, an instant phenomenon spawning three mainline games, three spin-off-like titles, and inspiring hundreds upon hundreds of other games, forging a new subgenre of action games: the soulslike.
And then, in 2022, FromSoftware released Elden Ring. The third spiritual spin-off (following 2015’s Bloodborne and 2019’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice) from the Souls series, the game is, without argument, the biggest that the company has ever made and a triumph of open-world game design. The game was followed up over two years later with its DLC, Shadow Of The Erdtree, equally as huge and ambitious. So what does a game developer do when it’s spent the last several years crafting two of its largest and most work-intensive projects? Where do you go after you make a game like Elden Ring?
Spin-offs. Or rather, a spin-off and smaller-scale project in the same vein. Revealed this past December during The Game Awards, Elden Ring Nightreign is a co-op focused title that makes use of a chunk of the main games map alongside returning assets not just from that game, but from previous titles in the Souls lineage. Fans were shocked when bosses from all three Dark Souls titles appeared in its trailer, and it reinforced the idea that Elden Ring was a bombastic closing chapter for the Souls series, and that Nightreign was its epilogue.
Perhaps more shocking and out of nowhere than the reveal of Nightreign was FromSoftware’s showing at Nintendo’s April 2 Direct for their new Switch 2 console. A port of Elden Ring for the system was announced, which, while not entirely surprising, was nice enough. The real surprise came not long after when an entirely new game from the company, titled The Duskbloods, was shown off.
In an interview with Nintendo in the days following the announcement, Miyazaki (returning as Director while Junya Ishizaki took over for Nightreign) discussed what exactly the game will be. Like Nightreign, The Duskbloods is an online multiplayer focused game, though focusing on PvPvE gameplay rather than straightforward co-op. It will launch at some point in 2026 as a Switch 2 exclusive and seems to be a more experimental, small-scale game from the studio when compared to titles like Sekiro or Armored Core VI (more on that game later). Miyazaki also made it clear that these back-to-back multiplayer releases are not the new standard for the company going forward, saying: “...we still intend to actively develop single player focused games such as this that embrace our more traditional style.”
This brings us back to the question of what the future of FromSoftware’s output will look like. When Elden Ring released in 2022, YouTuber DJ Peach Cobbler released a video titled “Elden Ring feels like the End”, which, outside of being a thoughtful and engaging analysis of video game marketing and stagnation (“Showing the Dog” should be a more widely used term in gaming criticism), brought up an intriguing and perhaps bleak question: Where can the Souls series even go from here?
When you’ve made a game as massive, detailed and packed with things to do as Elden Ring and Shadow Of The Erdtree, how do you expand upon that? Should you expand on it? Should you even try? If not, what do you do now? These are the questions I find myself asking regarding the company now that the fanfare over Elden Ring and its DLC is finally calming down, and I know that I’m not the only one.
It’s worth noting that FromSoftware have not solely focused on the Souls series and its related games since Demon’s Souls release in 2009. Following Dark Souls, the company released the fifth mainline installment in the Armored Core series, alongside its spin-off Verdict Day, as well as the critically panned Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor for Xbox Kinect. In 2018, Miyazki helmed the PlayStation VR title Déraciné, and in 2023, between Elden Ring and its DLC, the company released Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon, directed by Masaru Yamamura.
Despite all of these titles, however, it’s clear that FromSoftware’s primary focus for the past decade and change was building on the Souls formula. Armored Core V and Heavy Armor released very early during this era before Souls became the strong focus that it was, Déraciné was a smaller scale experimental project with its relatively short runtime and VR exclusivity, and Armored Core VI felt like the beginning of the company’s current transitionary period, with its melding on mecha gameplay, elements from the Souls games, and influence from other modern titles.
That’s the point that I’m trying to get across in this post. FromSoftware, as it exists currently, is in a period of transition, from the Souls era to whatever comes next. If Elden Ring really is the End as hypothesised by DJ Peach Cobbler, then the current era of FromSoftware is the beginning of the company's artistic rebirth. Looking to the future, every mainline installment of the Armored Core series has produced at least one spin-off title, utilising the same engine and gameplay in an expanded or alternate take on the base game; Armored Core VI hasn’t yet received DLC or expansions of any kind, but it could still be possible. Nightreign and The Duskbloods are yet to release, and it’s currently unknown if any DLC or future updates are planned. As for FromSoftware’s next major single-player release, nothing is currently known, but as the company takes their first step into this new era, I, along with the rest of the gaming world, wait with baited breath to see how they might push the industry forward.