In hindsight I think the backlash against 06 was also a convenient excuse for Sonic team to gradually wind down the ambitions and costs of titles as game development hit the more expensive HD era. Putting out more modest stuff was probably much easier to justify if one could point to the negativity about 06 and conclude it makes the most critical and financial sense to focus on Sonic alone.
Once the Boom project essentially failed due to Rise of Lyric, it was even more likely that people at Sega/Sonic Team shrugged and put multiple character emphasis on the backburner outside Classic Sonic or novelties like the Avatar. With the once cheap portable market now essentially just the Switch, Steam Deck, & mobile, its not a big surprise that any spin-off effort (and the chance to actuall play as the extended cast) have ended up on the latter.
Edited by BorneAgain on Oct 19th 2022 at 4:59:03 AM
Sonic Unleashed wasn't a less ambitious game...
Rules of the Internet 45. Rule 45 is a lie. Check out my art if you notice.And in some ways it was the exception that proved the rule. Sonic Team put out in a sense a half measure for what they'd been doing; a game that only had two gameplay styles, just Sonic as playble, a less serious story, and tighter focus on what it was going for. Yet a lot of the loudest voices (including critics) focused on the Werehog being an unnecessary gimmick that was dragging down the whole experience.
Unleashed's mixed reception in some ways the final nail in the coffin for some of the biggest ambitions of the series. An amazing looking game doing speed and detail that sill amazes almost 15 years later and filled with heart still couldn't save it from getting hit from criticisms that it was Sonic doing another wayward experiment that wasn't serving to help the series.
Edited by BorneAgain on Oct 19th 2022 at 4:57:31 AM
There was a recent interview with Iizuka that confirmed that the development of mainline Sonic games are going to be way longer if Frontiers is going to be the new standard.
So the hole needs to be filled with various spin offs. So I'm fairly certain that's where the extra characters are going to be going forward while they focus on the main games.
I feel like there's a good reason why any extra characters in the main games have just been some variant of Sonic as a result. So if we do get an additional character, expect them to like Sonic....if isn't just Classic Sonic or Shadow.
I mean in the case of Unleashed, it was also a matter of timing. Two years removed from 06 was the last place to be experimenting.
Frontiers is taking a similar risk, and people seem much more receptive of it.
Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Oct 19th 2022 at 5:00:32 AM
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.It looks like it's finally time for the return of a classic....
We're finally getting Sonic Chronicles 2!
<The sky grows dark>
What the hell is....
<Is buried under a hail of bricks>
Edited by HandsomeRob on Oct 19th 2022 at 3:55:44 AM
One Strip! One Strip!Most of those characters suck though...
Rules of the Internet 45. Rule 45 is a lie. Check out my art if you notice.the issue is that spin-offs for the video game industry as a whole are kinda dead. unless you're Pokemon or Mario, a spin-off is usually a loss waiting to happen. heck, even including Pokemon, the number of spin-offs being released has taken a nosedive outside of being heavily-monetized mobile games.
video games simply cost way too much to make nowadays unless you're intentionally making an indie title
"There's not a girl alive who wouldn't be happy being called cute." ~Tamamo-no-MaeWell its not just Sonic, its a lot of franchises. As Borne said, game development has gotten way more expensive so the oversaturation of games we had in the 90's and 2000's is a thing of the past.
Look at Mario, outside of the heavy hitters like Mario Kart or Mario Party, his spin off library has essentially dried up with a few exceptions here and there.
And Sonic doesn't bring in anywhere near as much money as Mario does, so less money for Spin offs overall.
Gee, it sure would be nice if we could get a smaller budget game that didn't require as much resources and focuses on a simpler style of play
I still can't get over how Sega just never followed up on Mania outside of some DLC a year after its release...
Ahh...
Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Oct 19th 2022 at 8:12:39 AM
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.Eh? Plenty of video game series nowadays have spinoffs. Most E3 and other video game showcases tend to be about half spinoffs these days. Sega itself is no stranger to them, with the billion spinoffs Yakuza has.
Even Sonic itself. They probably could make more Mania titles if they wanted to for far cheaper and more frequent than a Frontiers, they just are choosing not to.
It is the case that spinoffs are at their most impactful when they're consistent rather than one offs, however. You get the most benefit out of them - both in terms of profit and in terms of the sustained effect they have on reputation - when you've been doing them for long enough that their existence becomes expected.
Cutting back their spinoff game a few decades back was one of the the Sonic franchise's biggest missteps. It means that every mainline title that comes up basically has to hold the entire franchise on its back, which makes the missteps more prominent and committing to risky ideas (which the franchise adores to pursue) more dangerous.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Oct 19th 2022 at 5:16:16 AM
Yakuza (heh) gets by with heavy asset reuse, something fans have been giving Sonic shit for lately. But you do you have a point.
I can't think of many other franchises who use spin offs as a major selling point though unless they're mobile games.
Hmm...I guess Zelda and Fire Emblem also count here though?
EDIT: Also, if they're not spin offs, they're remakes/remasters of older games
Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Oct 19th 2022 at 8:22:14 AM
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.Just thinking from ones that were big in the last few months, Kirby does. Resident Evil has a bunch. Monster Hunter. Etc.
The main franchises you see not having spinoffs are ones where the primary focus of the fanbase is a very specific kind of experience. Fighting games, for instance, infamously have bad history with spinoffs because they already have a fairly niche appeal.
There's a degree to which spinoffs are safety nets, as long as they're done well. They're small, inconsequential titles that - if people enjoy them - give you a certain measure of profit and goodwill between your big titles. They're a big part of elevating a franchise from something individual to a household name. Sonic's buttload of spinoffs in the 90's (as well as his adaptations) are a big part of the cultural identity the character has been riding ever since.
If you've got the money, you can even make spinoffs that simulate the experience of the main games in a much more simplified form. This kind of spinoff is probably the best one, because it means that even if the next main title is subpar, there's still a smaller title that gives the players what they like out of the series. And while making something like this that's say, Adventure based or Boost based is way too expensive for where the series is at right now (unless they bring back Rush or something), Mania is right there being (comparatively) cheap and available, and they're not pursuing it.
Mania has the potential to be Sonic's New Super Mario Bros, something especially I think the series could benefit from.
(That said, it's admittedly very true that a lot of the franchise's other attempts at console non-Mania spinoffs in the last few years have resulted in them screwing up...)
Edited by KnownUnknown on Oct 19th 2022 at 5:36:24 AM
I think the truth is sort of in the middle. In that, video games spin-offs haven't dried up as a concept, but I do think it's not a really thing anymore for franchises to get a lot of low budget spin-offs in a short timeframe like some series used to get. Instead, spin-offs now tend to get almost as much marketing and even budget as mainline games do. I feel like spin-offs used to just get made to fill the market more or give a console series presence on handhelds, but now tend to be made to fill the gaps between mainline releases.
Which, Sonic isn't doing. Sonic gets barely any spin-offs now and there's bigger gaps between releases than ever. I think there was some restructuring going with Sonic Team and how much budget and attention Sega gave them starting around 2010. There's a lot of trends you can trace back to around then. The games' story getting less ambitious, the games doing the weird thing where they're written in English first then double localized, Sega of America started having more power when it came to marketing, Sonic Team started losing members, and spin-offs games basically stopped existing entirely. Except for the Olympics games, which are almost their own thing. And from what I've read, it sounds like around that time Sega started moving people from main Sonic Team to the Olympics series team because those games are much bigger money-maker domestically (i.e. in Japan) than the mainline games are due to having that much more popular Mario branding.
The 2010's is also when Yakuza became a more mainstream franchise, so I wouldn't be surprised if Sega felt like more time and resources should be spend there as opposed to Sonic. Sonic games sell regardless of their quality, so Sega probably figured putting the manpower towards the lesser known Yakuza was more profitable.
And...well, they weren't entirely wrong either; Yakuza became a best-seller and Sonic, subjective quality aside, didn't really suffer any real losses to its profit. If anything, Sonic was still one of Sega's major sources of income through 2020 and 2021 despite no games releasing whatsoever. It was definitely due to the influence of the movie, but it does illustrate that Sonic's name alone will sell.
But it still doesn't change the fact that the wealth of Sonic spin offs have severely dried up; outside of Mario & Sonic, the only other recent Spin off was Team Sonic Racing and Sega almost immediately stopped supporting it and just let it get slaughtered by Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, which the devs supported for a few months after release.
You can argue that was due that was because Sonic Team wanted all hands on deck for Frontiers though to make sure it's release went as smoothly as possible.
Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Oct 19th 2022 at 9:00:40 AM
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.

I'm pretty sure they meant that eventually people complaining about the characters are just gonna be ignored if they just don't leave the fanbase altogether.
Which is factually true as more time passes and less and less people give a damn.
And don't forget black Sonic.
Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Oct 19th 2022 at 4:13:18 AM
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.