Sonic X Shadow Generations announced, releases Autumn 2024

Well you’d have a proper license to it. Also, does Steam actually charge per X bytes of storage? The original could be included as part of the single listing for Sonic x Shadow.

Also, games like Rayman 2 on the PS1 included broken/incomplete prototypes. There’s appeal to this sort of thing (I get this is not the same.)

I get what you’re saying though.

 

The 2D level in Rayman 2 PS1 was an easter egg bonus level taken from a game that never even came out. Not a way to preserve the modding community for an older version of a game.

 

I wrote “I get this is not the same.” It *is* another example of a company trying to preserve something though.

How do we know mods will be impossible for the new game, however? Maybe it won’t be that challenging to update the loader. The base game doesn’t seem to have been changed much, based on the footage.

 

It's literally because of piracy that a lot of things have not become lost media. Piracy isn't really the only form of preservation and neither most ideal one like Aerosol said, but it is still preservation; it's thanks to it we still have acess a lot of media that is not avaliable in any official way.

 

It does suck that newer fans won’t be able to purchase the original version outright but I really need to ask. Do any of you genuinely believe that *normal person #3002* is going to give a shit about the older version and its ability to mod? No, they will only care about “how do I play generations” which this product fulfills.
What does preservation mean regarding the game? Does that mean a museum has the files backed up? Does it mean I can pirate and play it? Availability does not equate to preservation. I can’t go to Greece and buy an ancient marble slate from the Parthenon yet museums have “preserved” them.
And lastly, the game is literally still buyable, which is exactly what people wanted, it’s just in a different form that benefits Sega. If you ran a business, why in the world would you undercut yourself by selling customers a cheaper version of the very thing you’re trying to push on them right now?

TL;DR I have an incredibly hard time sympathizing with any of the points brought up in this thread.

 

OK you are all forgetting the most important thing, what if i don't want to buy sonic 4 to get old gens?

In all honesty, this whole thing does feel like "half full/empty glass" issue.
As far as people like us are concerned, this is not an issue, since everyone here has old gens I'm sure.
But I am inviting you to think about who does this decision affect, even if they're a small minority.

 

Every single decision ever made affects a nonzero amount of people. Does that mean every single person has to be catered towards? Not only is that impossible to achieve, it's an absurd notion to entertain...

You know, even if Sega aren't paying for the bandwidth for the servers the game is being stored on, my point was ultimately about profits and margins, which must be incredibly small for a 13 year old game that like I said, is already owned by most people who wanted it, and if not, is being sold for peanuts to an increasingly small amount of people... It's all about diminished returns.

A business operates not on the lowest common denominator, but instead lays out the biggest possible net to catch as many fish as they can.

To use my analogy as a point, it would be like using a small net to try to catch just a single, or small number of, jellyfish. Only a yellow, square shaped cartoon character would find that approach to be reasonable.

 

Ya I’ve thought the same. Unless you’re really into mods (I’m not but sure they’re cool) why would anyone want the original version? This is the same game with the Shadow story AND other updates. It’s not like there’s a retro/nostalgia factor. It’s the same game.

 

I think some of this boils down to fear over the "new Gens". Sonic doesnt exactly have a spotless track record for solid re-releases so this is very much a fear of SEGA's own making. But, if the new game is good, would you even want the old version? Like remember the original 2011 Steam version of SADX? Its basically been replaced by the updated 2014 version and is unavailable. Obviously there's also the issue of price, and removing a cheaper option that was formally there, despite making perfect business sense, its still a negative for the consumer. It shouldnt really be a shock that consumers are upset regardless of how sizable that negative turns out to be. The whole perservation talk I feel is people shouting in the forest, if you get what I mean, and really doesnt add anything meaningful to the topic of Sonic x Shadow Generations specifically. I feel like thats the main core of complaints about the delisting is removing a cheaper older option in favour of the pricier newer model or a bundle filled with stuff you might not want. Its all about the money. Hopefully the new game is stellar so everyone buys the shiny new version leaving few people to care for the old one.

 

I feel that even if the new release is good, the PC version has 10+ years of mods for it and will of course still run better on older hardware, so in that respect, I think it makes some sense to keep it around in some capacity (the notice on the Steam Store page itself also mentions mods, so Sega is very well aware of the game's modding community).

 

Except what should be analog input in Forces is instead 8-directional. Same issues as other SEGA PC ports like NiGHTs and I'm still not convinced that SA2 PC fix people have been saying fixes the input so rails work actually does anything.

Like some people have already said, Generations has had weird issues, like I remember something about it not working on RTX series cards. I don't know if someone provided a fix for that or if it's still the case, but it's obviously a huge problem for a vanilla version of something you're still selling today.


Anyways, when do we get to see the opening cutscene for the new version of Generations instead of just a screenshot?

 

Strictly speaking, yes, a game is "preserved" if it's available by sailing the high seas. But I shouldn't have to tell you that needing to break the law to be able to play a delisted game is not the kind of preservation we want.

With that out of the way, do you want to know how much it costs Sega to leave this game up on Steam?

Zero.

In other words, the argument that it costs Sega money to keep the game up and that it's not good business to spend money on a version that has been superseded is void.

Nobody is asking Sega to make the older version of the game compatible with newer systems. It was never meant to, and if the compatibility information (which is there for a reason) is clear, there's no issue.

 

Didn’t someone already say Classic Sonic’s spine is broken in the new version?

I’ll echo that the concern is mainly that the remaster will be worse.

 

Despite SEGA's track record on Sonic remasters, I am optimistic SxS will be a solid one. Nothing that we've seen regarding the Generations side sticks out as wack, compared to Colors Ult which was firing alarm bells day 1, and people have even played it at SGF and said its practically the same game. Unless the rest of the remaster outside of Green Hill is somehow unimaginably fucked, its looking like a definite straight upgrade to the OG

 

My only thoughts on the matter are this: the most prominent and known version of Sonic Adventure is the DX port, which single-handedly sullied the reputation of the original game due to how ass a port it was. If they fumble the bag on SxSh then the game could suffer the same fate.

Marketing, really. By selling this as a full price “new” game it draws more eyes on it than if they sold it as DLC, to a decade old game no less.

There really should’ve been SOMETHING for former owners though… Bethesda & iD Software just updated Doom 1 & 2 recently, for example, and if you owned one of the two games you were able to download this fairly large update for free.

 

As dumb as it may sound, SxSG is not the authentic experience of a game that for many marked a turning point. It detaches Generations from the idea of celebrating Sonic's 20th anniversary and claims it's a remaster, rather than "the definitive way of enjoying the game" or something. TBH, if I plan to check something out for the first time, usually I don't automatically go for the original. Some things need to be considered beforehand. How old is the game, how much time has passed between the initial release and the re-release (think of games like P5R, or Final Fantasy VIII Remastered, where it greatly differs), how many ports did it get, what was the general reception, etc.

In the case of Sonic Generations, I would go with SxSG, because I like Shadow. If I were just here for the anniversary, I would prefer the original.

From a sales perspective I can understand the logic behind the delisting, but I see no harm whatsoever in bringing it back again later down the line.

 

Well, I knew that someone was going to pull the "it's either corpos or crime" card, so what did you expect me to do? This is just not how media preservation has ever worked before now, and just saying "nah it's fine" only stands to watch things get worse without doing anything. Like, preservation organizations exist. Sometimes even with government funding. You wanna watch Terminator? It's preserved at the library of congress. I would call that a little more safe than having to get OG Generations off of http:// viruscore.skidrow.yiffporn.repacks.exe.co.is or whatever. We could have something similar for games, but we don't because this uncaring mindset is so pervasive. And I dunno how to tell you this, but when viruscore skidrow yiffporn repacks inevitably goes down, there's no guarantee you'll just be able to get everything from it again. SEGA isn't as litigious towards piracy as some companies, but how preserved is something that's constantly being reuploaded and taken down with no assurance that each time isn't the last? Let alone how obviously inconvenient or dangerous to the PC of the end user it is.

Is Sonic Runners preserved? You can't run your own private server, as far as I understand it (maybe you can and i just haven't heard, but there's plenty of other half-alive games in that situation). Does the fact that the Runners revival team runs a server count as preservation? The game is just as much on life support as it was under SEGA. Maybe they would release their work and documentation if it had to go down permanently, and maybe they wouldn't and fans would have to start all over on a server emulator, which may suck and not be completed due to lack of interest. If you think "preservation" is all or nothing you're just being ignorant. This is an extreme scenario, but it's a microcosm of exactly how "preserved" any game that's only available on pirate websites is. Saying "actually it isn't volatile at all" doesn't make it not a real problem.