Is Sega Worried About Sonic Colors Stealing Sonic 4s Thunder

Is Sega Worried About Sonic Colors Stealing Sonic 4s Thunder

The saga of the latest two Sonic games has to be some of the oddest handling of PR I’ve seen in the industry in a long time. First, Sega made a huge deal of teasing Sonic 4 through its Project Needlemouse hype campaign, with the reveal of a new 2D Sonic game met with renewed hope by longtime series fans. A few months later, without any fanfare or hype build up, Sonic Colors was announced. It was almost as if Sega was embarrassed to mention Sonic Colors. And with the announcement that it would be a 3D platformer with new gimmick characters in the colored alien wisps, many fans were perfectly content to ignore the game and put their full attention on the hedgehog’s return to 2D.

Then E3 came around where we actually got to play both games, and Sonic Colors was freakin’ amazing. At least for me personally, easily a contender for Game of the Show.

But I wasn’t the only one who took notice. Across all manner of gaming blogs and news sites, Sonic Colors was gaining a lot of attention. After all, by all accounts it was the 3D Sonic game fans had been waiting for: fast, fun, only Sonic as a playable character, and without any of the camera issues or sticky geometry of past 3D Sonic games. Sega replied to the excitement by saying that Sonic Colors was actually a kids game, and that Sonic 4 was the game that core gamers will enjoy. Now, in a recent interview with Game, Sonic Colors lead designer Takashi Iizuka has reiterated that distinction between Sonic for kids and Sonic for the core gamer. When asked about how speed and control would be managed in Sonic Colors, to prevent the game from feeling like rollercoaster playing itself, Iizuka replied:

We know there are sometimes opinions about control from core gamers, but we’re intending Sonic Colours to be played by children of probably between six and twelve years-old.So, with Sonic Colours we have aimed more to make a game that everyone can control and have fun in. So, it’s not really a game for the core gamers. If you take the rail grind, it’s something that’s fast, not difficult but is fun to do and looks great. It’s about making a game that’s right for the core audience of the game.
As I’ve said before, the distinction between Sonic games for kids and “core” gamers is an utterly ridiculous one to make. Sonic games on the Genesis were all kids games when they were released, and Sonic 4 models itself after Sonic 1 and 2, so logic would dictate that Sonic 4 would be classified as a kids game as well. The only difference is the nostalgia factor, but from a pure gameplay standpoint Sonic 4 would attract the same age group audience that the original Sonic games did: kids.

But I think the bigger problem is how Sega seems to view Sonic fans, as revealed in later comments from Iizuka in that same interview.

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Assassins Creed 2 Lost Money ($54.02 Million)

Assassins Creed 2 Lost Money ($54.02 Million)

No s***. What do you get when you mix a medicore game with tons of DRM crap. A loss. Now watch them blame all the dirty pirates out there for this one, lol, fools. Here is the story from Gamasutra :French Splinter Cell publisher Ubisoft recorded a decrease in sales and a loss for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2010, blaming worldwide economic downturn.

The company on Tuesday recorded a 17.7 percent drop in annual sales to €871 million ($1.08 billion), and posted a loss of €43.7 million ($54.02 million).

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said in a statement, “The global economic crisis had a pronounced impact on the video game industry in 2009, which contracted by nearly 10 percent year-on-year.”

“Ubisoft’s sales were hit particularly hard, falling 18 percent over the full year despite a stabilization in the second half of the year, when figures came in on a par with the corresponding period of 2008-09,” he added.

Fourth quarter sales were €200 million ($247.32 million), slightly higher than guidance but lower than the €206 million ($254.76 million) recorded for the same quarter a year ago.

During Q4, Ubisoft said that it had strong sales ofJust Dance for Wii, which has seen 3 million units sold-in. The publisher also said that November’s Assassin’s Creed II has reached nearly 9 million units sold-in during the fiscal year.

Ubisoft noted the strong reviews of Red Steel 2 for Wii, and said the game’s performance was in line with recently-revised forecasts. In addition, sales of Avatar exceeded forecasts, “notably on Wii,” Ubisoft said.

Guillemot said during a conference call that Ubisoft will continue to support Nintendo’s platform, but with a focus on family-friendly titles.

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IVG: Developer: Medal of Honor

IVG: Developer: Medal of Hono

Being a franchise reboot, how drastically different from the past games will this Medal of Honor game be?

For this game, we’ve gone back to our roots and the core tenets that the franchise was founded on. We’ve focused on the soldier and telling their story with authenticity and respect.

With so much emphasis on multiplayer these days, single player campaigns in games – shooters in particular – tend to get ignored and we end up with 5-6 hour campaigns. With DICE handling the multiplayer aspect of MOH, can we expect a beefier single player experience than we’ve grown used to?

Absolutely. This is one of the reasons we made the decision to utilise the core strengths of two separate studios. It is a crowded genre and our competitors are very good at what they do. So for this reboot, we wanted to do everything we could to give the Medal of Honor fans a great experience on both sides of the coin.

What were the challenges and advantages of using Afghanistan as a setting for the game in terms of level design and mission structure?

The setting allowed us a great deal of diversity. Afghanistan has a visual cascade of differing environments. From lush green river valleys and dry, arid desert terrains to squalid inner city slums and snowy mountain peaks.

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