As for Sega prestigious IP's, Persona, Yakuza and Total War are coming to my mind. I hope this game turns out good. I don't want much, just a fun, light-hearted adventure. A "Sonic Unleashed 2" of sorts. I'm afraid of it being a Bargain bin title like Forces.
Yep I think this is the perfect way of explaining the situation. I imagine the livestream team got really strict orders from higher management at SEGA telling them not to mention the name "Rangers" at all. We aren't meant to know the name "Sonic Rangers". We technically aren't even supposed to know that Sonic Forces was originally referred to as "Sonic Wars". I don't think that was ever said in any official statement.
I vocalized the fact that I would be annoyed with just a teaser without anything substantial backing it up for a while and...I was. I really wanted them to just hush until they had a good pitch that included gameplay and story details but I guess the situation was getting a little out of control with the fans? I haven't been on Sonic Twitter much but that's what I've heard. This is anecdotal but re: that point on the last page.I've seen people who were begging for "Just a little bit of information" turn around and say the teaser isn't enough. I wasn't really that surprised either. Everyone knows these types of CGI teasers are always underwhelming, but Sonic fans are always saying stuff they don't really mean. It's a little annoying but there's not much one can do.
It's hard to not feel like the fanbase is "unpleasable" at times when you have so many groups screeching and reacting to anything the series does on social media. When you don't interact with anybody, life is good. But when I just wanna get some basic ass news or look up fanart, I get bombarded with the most unpleasant of shit. It's very draining and probably made me much more harsh on the fanbase than I should be. Also, from the outside looking in, it's kind unprecedented for something like the Sonic fanbase to have so many different voices screaming with equal amounts of volume. We had people who kept screaming for Sega to show them something or anything, and so they did. So the group that wanted something more substantial spoke up and talked about how much they disappointed them yet again. Even if I understand that these are different groups of people, all with their own individual opinions, it doesn't make it any less exhausting to see it whenever it shows up. But, there's really nothing anyone can do about it and it's just the nature of this series and fanbase, and I need to learn to stop harping on it so much because nothing is going to change because no group in this fanbase will ever be completely satisfied unless Sega somehow manage to release a 10/10 game. I'm really hoping Rangers does deliver so people can relax and just enjoy this series again like sane people...
Well, the teaser means next to nothing to me (I mean: Sonic runs, disappears, and then symbols), but, while I could wait for news (I only wanted them so these forums focused again on something instead of what was happening around), it was satisfying for me to get some notice they were working on something. Like when we get the first screenshot of a fangame and nothing more, I suppose: we want some new fangame, somebody tells us "We're doing a new fangame", and then we want THAT fangame (as long as it's not some unintended crap, of course). I'm ok with what we got, and I'd also like to see more.
I'm fine we got a teaser, at least for the time being. They're not ideal, but I'm glad we got something. I'd be more annoyed about wanting more info every now and then, but only really when I have nothing else to do haha.
I would be less upset by them using the intentionally vague teaser approach again if they A. bothered to present anything that we could take to be indicative of the gameplay, and B. if they gave us an indication of when we can expect to hear more. Because it's been specified we will be seeing more on Colors Ultimate at E3 but they are remaining mum on Rangers, I doubt we're seeing it there and it seems like there are no concrete plans for another Sonic Central at this time either. This is Forces all over again except Forces' teaser at least gave more indication of what to expect (heavily implying it was a boost game, revealing the return of Classic Sonic, imagery that could give us an idea of the basic concept). I wouldn't be surprised if the timeline until we see actual gameplay is comparable to Forces' rollout. This time around if we didn't have leaks, literally no one would still be talking about it right now because there was nothing of substance in that trailer to discuss that would last more than a day. I feel a pretty strong disdain for how they are handling this, but not because the strategy of just showing off a pre-rendered trailer is new or anything, obviously it's an industry standard. It's not inherently a bad move. My issue is that Sonic is not in a strong enough place that posturing like this actually results in widespread hype. It turns into trepidation – in the mildest of terms – because there is no guarantee of quality and thinking it will result in anything else makes it seem like whoever comes up with these overarching strategies don't really know how to read the room.
The teaser said practically nothing, but it confirmed the leaks and I was excited because this project SEEMS more ambitious than usual. That's why I'm fine with it.
I find it interesting because this teaser reactions kind of spells out the disconnected between Sega and the fanbase. They seem to think that the series is in a good enough standing that they can just throw out a teaser and people will get hype, and to an extent that's true. The movie wasn't that long ago and its still in people's consciousness. But long time fans are on edge because we know their story. To me, it reads like Sega simply not caring what the older fans think about the series and just doubling down on mainstream appeal.
Which, to be fair, isn't a bad business strategy on it's face. The problem arises when the way they try to "double down on mainstream appeal" is by doing things that contemporary games have already done much better.
A big issue also arises when you realize that there are now multiple generations of "long time fans" who know how they are. There are a lot more longtime fans than just the Genesis babies and the Adventure babies; there are people who grew up with Colors who understand SEGA's shtick by now, they got 2 great games before Boom happened and the cycle started all over. We're all a pretty significant chunk of the consumer base.
funny how I'm kind of a weird mix of all of these. Introduced to series with Advance, moved on to Adventure, went back to the classics with Mega Collection and was only 12 when Colours came out so still kinda have a sense of nostalgia for all Sonic up until Boom lol
I don't actually think we are. It feels like for every one Sonic fan that's done with Sega's shit there's 10 more kids that will stop the bleeding. Sonic's always been smart enough to have it's hands in more than one basket whenever the games shit themselves. This is going to be doubly true with the movie series and Sonic Prime running simultaneously for the next couple of years at least. These might be formative years for the IP on par with Sonic 1-2 or SA2-heroes's release, and the game's quality feels largely irrelevant to how it'll all go down to me. It just needs to be decent for things to hold together, and Sonic Team can do decent if nothing else.
Same here!! I was a grade schooler in the early 2000s when I got a Genesis, got a Gameboy and a PS2 a few years later and played all those games, eventually got my hands on a Wii and played the Adventure games 10-15 years late
Depends on the type of bleeding and how severe. There are certain things that may need to be changed because they can't exactly offset costs. Sega says themselves that they aren't actually making money off the cartoon or the film it's advertising. And they may find themselves in a situation simular to boom that despite the success of the other media they can't offset costs because the audiences those 10 kids wabt something simular to the media that got them in. On some level Sega understands this, they have already started adopting things in small ways. But there will soon be a point where those smallways won't cut it, they are going to actually need to adapt. The biggest hurdle in their contentedness with themselves is that the people working on the film are competent and likely the cartoon too. People are more than happy to watch a sonic thing and not buy the sonic thing. And I think that may happen again
Or, you know, Sega could just make sure that adaptations are closer to the games. Then they won't need to reshape the source material, further fragmenting the fanbase. And correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the reason Sonic Boom was different from the Sega games that they specifically wanted to create a new multimedia sub-franchise for a new audience? They released Sonic Boom games and comics to go with the cartoon, and the franchise still fizzled out. Maybe the actual problem lies in factors like the games' quality (or lack thereof).
I don't remember the "Sonic fans are unpleasable" thing until around Sonic 4, when the narrative was "why are the fans complaining, they made a game like the Good Ones, wow, this fanbase is unpleasable!" That and the "green eyes" thing. It was a way of making fun of the classic fanbase because back then the idea that ANYONE liked anything past 3&K was basically not a thing at all until like 5 years ago when the adventure kids grew up and began posting heavily online to other places than our insular deviantart communities. I don't even see it that much these days to be honest--the general perception now is that Sonic is a fractured fanbase, not a single whiny mass that can't make up its mind.
Just figured I'd share this very recent interview GameInformer did with Iizuka. They briefly talk about Sonic 2022 (aka Rangers): "many different approaches" makes me think that Sonic Team straight up went back to the drawing board after Forces failed. I like that line about "advancing what a modern Sonic game can be", it heavily implies this won't be another standard Boost game. Seems like they're trying to future-proof a new gameplay style.
The answers were about as vague as they could get, but at the very least he didn't straight up say "We're making another boost game" so I'd say it's encouraging. Also we're totally not getting more news at E3, why did I ever bother getting hyped lol
I realized something the other day: Almost every single mainline Sonic game after 06 has been a budget release. Sonics Unleashed, Generations, and Lost World all launched at $49.99, $10 less than the standard retail price of most new titles on those platforms. Mania was a special case, but it was only $19.99. Then Forces launched at $39.99, $20 off. Sonic Colors (and now, Colors Ultimate) is the only game in the past 15 years that actually launched at full price. (And technically, the WiiS2 version of Unleashed did as well.) After Heroes, Shadow, and 06, I think giving players a bit of a price break to help them regain some trust in the brand was a good call back in the late 2000s. But while a budget title like Forces might have succeeded at what Sega wanted it to do, as a fan of the series, I'm really hoping Sonic Team is able to fire on all cylinders from here on.
