Sonic Frontiers Thread - PS4, PS5, Xbox, Switch, PC

How do free games compete with one another? Competition happens because a person's limited income means they can only afford to buy 1 out of multiple products. What, does PSN have an arbitrary limit on how many free games you can download?

I don't think "most downloaded game when it was free" is a point in Forces' favor. To me, that says that a massive amount of people looked at the game and said "Well, I like Sonic, but this game does not look worth spending one cent on". I also think the fact that Sega claims that both Mania and Forces sold well, but only released actual sales figures for Mania, is quite telling. To me, that says they either want to save face and lied about Forces' sales to not look like they were shown up at their own game by a bunch of Westerners, or they don't want to admit just how low their sales projections for Forces were. To make up some numbers to illustrate, a game that sells 10k copies seems like a complete failure, but if its expected sales were only 5k, then technically it was successful.

 

It don't, but it tells you people aren't even interested in downloading some games, even though they are free.

Not necessarily, when GTA5 was offered for free on Epic game store, that site actually crashed, TONS of people went to download it in a way that was not apparent in other free games.
despite the reputation of GTA 5 as a good game, and despite being like one of the most successful videogames ever with over 100 million sales, you think everyone had it by now.

That doesn't tell you that people thought GTA was not worth spending a cent on it, but tells you how popular the franchise is.

They can't lie to investors and in their financial reports about such matter, and them announcing Mania sales but not Forces could also tell you that the opposite happened and they actually expected Mania to sell way worse than Forces , so, hypothetically speaking, if Forces sold 1 million but they expected it to sell that, while Mania also sold 1 million but they expected it to sell 5K. in that case they would celebrate Mania forces more cause it exceeded their expectations, even though both of them sold the same amount.

 

I'm going to say that you were spitting this whole post but I do think Mania getting things like an animated short, a rerelease with bonus features and new playable characters, and being frequently rereleased on a more regular basis than Forces points to it being the more successful game.

I agree with everything else you said though.

 

Oh i am not going to deny Mania success at all, and it's for those reasons you said ,that's why it will be always be silly to suspect that SEGA secretly hate Mania "cause foreign made it and hurt their pride" and that's why we won't get sequels. despite them actually going out of their way to support it and make more content for it a whole year after it's release, something that basically didn't happen to any sonic game before it, if they hated it that much and how it was more successful than Forces, they could have just easily....do nothing, doing nothing is way more easier than doing something.

I was just making an extreme example of why they celebrate Mania success more specifically, i am sure they had low expectations for it in general and they even got on record to say something to that effect, about it supposedly be "something for the older fans, didn't expect the kids now to actually like it too"

 

The last thing I'll say is the person who started saying that on here was me but I was a little more tactful and specific. I don't think SEGA hates Mania or it's success, I just think they realized they need to focus on getting the main 3D games to a good point ASAP.

If we got a Mania 2 next year, alongside Rangers, and Mania 2 pulled 9/10's and 10/10's and Rangers was getting 6's and 7's that would be pretty damning for the future of the franchise. They want to put everything they can into making Rangers as good as possible.

Sometimes you have to be shown up to get hungry again to make something special. I know this is a different medium but Kanye West had a verse on a song with Lil Wayne and Tyler the Creator called Smuckers. After he heard what they did, he rewrote his entire verse because he realized he half assed it and wanted to not be the weakest link on the song. SEGA probably feels like that with 3D Sonic and I think that's a good thing.

 

It does sort of show Sonic's weird lasting power though. Something about Sonic, most other franchises would have died by now if they were in Sonic's shoes, but nope, even if some of the games are garbage people still want to see the character.

 

Yeah, no kidding. Being a fan of Rayman is tough these times. Even though Rayman Legends was received very well, it sold under expectations. I Bought this game 3 times on three different platforms to show my support and... Nothing. No new games.

Sonic fans had it better - there always will be something new every year or two, be it a mobile game, a racing game, comics or cartoons. Sonic is still an icon, and with the recent movie, if Sega plays cards right - we could have a whole new era of good Sonic.

Let's rethink it:
- Movie is good, tickets sold well. I believe even Sega itself could have been surprised by the warm welcome.
- Having a history of bad games, Sega rethinks it's Sonic strategy. Forces was "meh" but it released in 2017 - whole 4 years ago. Now Sonic caught attention worldwide, so Sega knows, more people are paying attention to the brand - releasing a mediocre game would certainly damage it.
- Sega rereleases Sonic Colours, one of better received Sonic games in recent years. I believe it's a part of their strategy, to show Sonic's greatness (even thought we see that it's more of a DX Director's cut).
- No words on new 2D game. It's crazy to assume they hate Mania or something. As You guys pointed out, game sold like crazy. People loved it. I actually believe, that Sega doesn't want to milk the formula for now, and save it for another special occasion.

So, Sega knows Sonic is getting big again, and if so - they should increase the budget of Sonic 2022. It should at least be bigger than Forces or Generation's. It might not be adequate to Unleashed thought.

 

I think that speaks to the core strength of Sonic as a character. As much as people want to say that Sonic's characterisation is a far cry now from what it was (and sure, things have changed), he really hasn't changed too much over the years. He's continued to be a highly individualistic personality who's laid back but ultimately fights for what he knows to be right, and faces danger with an honest-to-god smile on his face. I think there's something very appealing and in some areas relatable about that.

Not to mention Sonic's abilities are incredibly easy to understand and explore in multimedia. Unlike Mario, Sonic's has had a huge and continued multimedia presence between TV shows, movies, comic books, figures and so on so forth. I reckon a boatload of kids who like(d) Sonic from around 2003 have that connection with him due to the TV shows, and having a serialised, long running comic under one publisher or another since 1993 has only helped keep fans engaged in between games.

Finally, Sonic isn't derivative. He's just not. People criticise the creation of Sonic as being unoriginal because the original game was conceived as a killer app to compete with the Mario series, but that doesn't automatically invalidate all the original ideas and concepts the series has birthed. Unlike his own pretenders, Sonic wasn't trying to mimic Mario, at least not during his formative years. He may have been a reaction, sure, but everything he brought to the table was fresh and all his own.

I think these things are what has allowed Sonic to be so enduring, and what will keep him relevant for years to come. And hopefully, if SEGA truly understands this, then Rangers may recapture some of the awe and individuality from his Mega Drive and Dreamcast outings rather than being another Lost World or Forces - derivative and safe without capitalising on Sonic's strengths both as a character and as a franchise.

 

Sonic went from a cultural icon to the industry's own village idiot. There's something of a strange and perverse novelty to the sheer enormity of that disparity in perception. His very existence has effectively become something of a 'meme', which, combined with his aforementioned initial cultural impact, have seared him into the zeitgeist for the foreseeable future, quality going forward literally be damned. I think that's where the brand's ultimate staying-power lies.

I think a genuinely great game like Mania, maybe together with a relatively well-received film, may've helped some of the "laughing at Sonic" that's taken hold on the internet in the last decade transform into "actually enjoying Sonic". I think they're towing a fine line so far and being careful, but.....this is the kind of goodwill that Sega lives to squander.

 

To be honest, Sonic's always been somewhat controversial, even in the 90's. That's kind of what happens when you're literally designed from the ground up to subvert the status quo of platforming games. I've seen many people have the same opinions about Sonic back then as they do now, the main difference is that the games were good enough to sort of stay off those negative opinions. The advent of the Internet plus Sonic's declining quality of games just kind of validated all of the negative opinions and perceptions about him.

The character was literally built on "being cool", and that's always going to be difficult to maintain. Sonic isn't a humble everyman like Mario who just does good things just because they're good, he's obnoxious, arrogant, and just loves the thrill of adventure and that can make him seem "unlikable" when these traits are utilized poorly.


Sonic's the type of series of incredible highs, and absolutely terrible lows. Nintendo go above and beyond to ensure Mario's quality, while Sega more or less just treat Sonic as a brand image to sell to the masses...because that's what he was designed as. Sonic's a brand first, and Sega simply don't view him with the same reverence as Nintendo does with Mario. I doubt they have any ill intent, but they certainly do not hold the series to same standards as most of the fanbase do.

 

Kind of moving goal posts. I don't think anyone downloaded GTA V thinking "YES NOW I CAN GET MICROTRANSACTIONS" there are people who owned the game on PS3 and PS4 and just never got the PC version because it felt redundant and had no issue downloading it on Epic Games store because it was free.

I'm pretty sure Sonic Forces became free the same year the movie did gangbusters so some kids who never played Sonic before who liked the movie probably downloaded it to give the games a shot. There could have been some adults who did the same thing.

Maybe they even liked it enough they'll pay for Colors Ultimate and Rangers too.

 

hahahah...ha...ha...I still remember the hype and being excited......

 

"Finally, it looks like Sega is actually listening to us. They're making Riders for the kiddies, but this is for the REAL fans."

 

Indeed, Sonic Frontiers has been publicly trademarked by Sega.
There have been a few leaks with that specific name change, if memory serves.
edit: seems my initial post on this accidently made it into somewhere other than SToOK, apologies mods

 

I was on my way to post this in the Supreme topic of other knowledge, but you beat me to the punch lol.

I'm pretty sure most of us saw this coming. Forces was called Sonic Wars, so this came as no surprise to me. And now I also get the added benefit of being able to silently laugh at the people who legitimately thought the game was called "Sonic Zap" lmao.

 

Neat.

This won't stay open long if that's all we've got.

 

Oh thank god Rangers was not a thing. I thought this name was awful.