How did Miyazaki become president of FromSoftware?

Ten years from career-changer to president, a rise his own industry called unprecedented.

When Kadokawa Corporation announced its purchase of FromSoftware in April 2014, the restructuring that followed promoted Hidetaka Miyazaki to company president the next month, May 2014; he later took the title of representative director as well. Founder Naotoshi Zin remained as an advisor. The trade press noted the plain fact of it: in Japan, where Miyazaki had changed careers at 29 and joined the company only in 2004, reaching the presidency within ten years was considered unprecedented.

He kept directing. Bloodborne, Dark Souls III, Déraciné, Sekiro and Elden Ring were all made under President Miyazaki, who has said the executive work and the creative work run in parallel, including serving as initial director on Armored Core VI before handing the chair to Masaru Yamamura.

Armored Core: For Answer cover art — **FOR ANSWER · 2008** Armored Core: For Answer (2008), the game Miyazaki directed just before Demon’s Souls — the directing credit that set up his rise to the president’s office in 2014.

WHAT THE JOB LOOKS LIKE

President and lead creative, simultaneously

He still writes

On his own projects Miyazaki writes the majority of the story, dialogue and text and keeps final say over character, monster and level design. The presidency did not promote him away from the desk where the games are made.

He also lets go

Dark Souls II was supervised, not directed, because Bloodborne was being made in parallel; Armored Core VI was handed to Yamamura mid-development. The studio’s second generation of directors, Tanimura, Yamamura, Ishizaki, is his other body of work.

How did Miyazaki become president of FromSoftware?

WHAT THE JOB LOOKS LIKE

THE FIRST WORD