...Team Sonic Racing is only $40. I will maintain my earlier assessment that what we are seeing are "safe games" after the Boom failure. Marketing won't come into play as we are seeing "franchise rehab". Much like with Forces, the game need only be serviceable before they try anything fancy. Way I see it, this game just has to not bomb.
I would say that the Sonic Stadium preview did have some stuff that made me be interested in the game again. At the same time I can definitely see how that stuff might not stick with the audience and critics. A lot of people found it difficult adjusting to the terrain changes and challenges in ASRT so I can definitely see people having trouble adjusting to the different strategies between the teams. Another thing that worries me is how the stats and balancing are going to be handled. Are Sega and Sumo going to be patching the game if characters and teams need to be balanced? I mean, if they're really going for that Overwatch/Splatoon crowd then this is something that is expected when issues come up.
A tl;dr summary: This was Forces's gameplay reveal (and remember--this was eight months after Forces was originally revealed at the 25th anniversary party with nothing but a CG trailer and Sega went dark on the game): Compare this to the official reveal of Super Mario Odyssey: The difference is literally night and day on which game has much, much more going on in concerns to how it is being sold. (You don't even have to compare Mario Odyssey in particular--check similar reveal trailers for Crash N-Sane Trilogy and Knack II, and even other Sonic games like Mania, Unleashed and Colors.) --- Sega PR over the past few years has been engaging in what has been coined the "starving dog" technique: dropping tidbits of information (and usually small, minuscule information at that) between long droughts of nothing; and it's a pretty irritating way of generating cheap hype, as opposed to sticking to a more consistent schedule of meaningful material: either big blowouts of material between droughts (which Nintendo usually does for their games) or a constant stream of information, big and small (see Vicarious Visions with Crash N-Sane). Forces is IMO the biggest offender so far in recent times--not just for the above reveal (CG trailer >> eight months of silence >> 30 second gameplay footage), but for other various things such as the Japanese demo (one minute time limit), only showing Green Hill/City levels until late September, and the classic Sonic reveal in April. The last of which revealed out of the blue the game would now be revisiting Green Hill (and ultimately other classic levels) again like Mania was doing despite no indication of the sort of the past nine months (compared to Mania being upfront about returning levels from the first teaser). It's egregious when knowing that Forces was in development for four years, yet the way they marketed the game was as if Sonic Team just started putting the game together when they announced it (referring to the actual start of production when I say this) and they didn't actually have much to show as a result. Marketing for Mania itself wasn't above this either, it took them months to show new acts of levels, and they were usually only screenshots or short clips. It can be somewhat excused due to keeping secret the original zones and some of the returning remixed levels, and there's also the fact the game was delayed out of its Spring release into August. This continued with Mania Plus having the March SWSX panel reveal but no footage (that came a few weeks later IIRC) and the E3 2018 Sega stream where they said they would show a multiplayer battle for the game but instead brought a Sonic-branded shoe and toaster and made burnt toast for twenty minutes (although they did bring a copy of the retail packaging/artbook...and showed them for all of fifteen seconds). Looking back on it, I actually get the feeling that both games (Forces and Mania) may have actually suffered a bit from being announced earlier than they should had been if Sega didn't really have much (they wanted) to show. Even though people were getting outright restless on the lack of information following Lost World and the Boom fallout (not helped by the constant charade of vague clues Aaron was also doing during that time). The ultimate irony though is that Mania, despite having a shorter production cycle, had more pre-release content for people to digest compared to Forces when all it said and done. Then of course you currently have TSR--game was revealed in March with the aforementioned vague teaser and it took them until late May to show...a cropped picture of what would turn out to be the boxart. It's entirely possible had the Walmart leak not happened the official game reveal trailer (which was just...another CG trailer, mind you; that could itself been the trailer showed at March SXSW) would had been posted much later than they actually did. And while we know most of the playable roster, they've only shown three racetracks so far, despite the game being planned for release later this year. Nonetheless, I again say this isn't new--you can see this strategy even going as far back as Sonic 4: Episode I, with the notorious "Project Needlemouse" CG teaser back in September 2009 and then going silent until the proper February 2010 reveal with the character countdown contest. That clownshow I still single out as the worst instance of Sega's PR tactics--Sega staff were building up concept art of trees and badniks (both of which we had seen before, mind you--remember Sonic 4: Episode I was a giant rehash-fest of the past Genesis games) as super-duper important reveals; and --similar to Forces-- they blew trumpets for fans to watch the game's official reveal only to show three fucking seconds of gameplay footage. Is it any wonder the Partnernet leak happened later that month and Sega ended up delaying the game to save face? (Not that they actually addressed the majority of the big problems people had about the game...)
I'm glad someone else brought this up. I remember upon the initial teaser trailer being very up-in-arms about the clear mistake they were making by dropping an uninformative trailer that raised more questions than answers, in addition to blatantly contradicting what they were implying visually when Iizuka claimed it WASN'T Generations 2 despite Classic Sonic's prominence then going silent for months. People here told me I was overreacting :P I think history has vindicated this view though. I'd say TSR's marketing is being handled ever so slightly better purely due to the fact that they didn't wait as long to display gameplay. That said, the rest of the promotional campaign has been at best, mediocre. The question is whether or not this is due to the game itself not having a ton going for it or the marketing strategy itself.
So, as reported over on Sonic Stadium, TSR is very likely getting delayed to a nebulous 2019 release date.
Did any of the trailers say it would be released 2018? Wasn't it just "Winter", which would also cover early 2019?
Yeah technically "Winter" is December 21 2018 onwards until March 21 2019 hence the Winter period naturally infers 2019. That said "2018" was definitely used in the early marketing (I remember reading so and naming this thread accordingly) so it looks like the plan at least initially was to get this out for the holidays but the game has seemingly slipped until later. Sega love to get Sonic games out in time for Christmas but we know from impressions the game's in a sorry state (frame rate and so on) so evidently needs more time.
Is it possible that although they'd already contracted the developers to create this game, after the goodwill of Mania and the underperformance of Forces, they're just trying to get this game out there without damaging said goodwill too much? Thus, a lack of proper marketing? Or is this just business as usual for SEGA, who have no idea what to do with their flagship brand?
Could be but I'd hazard a guess it's just Sega being Sega. Mania was a blip on the radar in that it had good marketing whilst most other Sonic releases have been mishandled stupendously in recent years. Honestly I think the last time their marketing was on-point outside of Mania which was probably driven by passion was Generations? I mean they had the audacity to heavily infer Team Sonic Racing was connected to Sonic R in the most vacuous promise they've made in recent memory instigating false hope amongst the fans just to ignite interest a little more. So I'm putting this down to "Sega gonna Sega". That and this game is having development troubles which could be hindering them also.
Not sure if this has been shared yet but Crunchii has uploaded an extended version of Market Street's music:
They're not doing too well with their release dates lately, uh? Fire and Ice, Mania and now this. I'll still take this any day over something like Sonic 06, of course.
Damn, I could see a like month or two delay, but an effective five month delay? That's a huge amount of time in this case.
This game has no hype right now. Seven months won't completely rework the game, but it will polish it, and hopefully make a better marketing strategy. Arin Hanson apparently went to Sega of Japan for it. Maybe he's part of an oncoming hype train?
