Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice

[Graystripe2000]

This kind of reminds me of Project x Zone 2 when it came out in the U.K. back in February. It didn't chart on it's first week, then entered the next week at #3 in the 3DS charts. 

[FriendBot]

Ok, so last night I was chatting with Alan Denton on Twitter and he brought some insight on his, Hahn and Freiberger's involvement on the game.

He said that the 3 of them were only involved in writing the colorful commentary of the show's concept art, they had NO involvement with the story Pontaff and Guerrero wrote.

So that means, Pontac and Graff really did took the time to watch the show, picked on the mannerisms of the characters and brought that into the games without any involvement from the show staff.

I've gotta say, I'm proud of them for that. I really hope that if they are working on Project 2017's story; they put just as much effort into the game's story and characterization as they did for this game.

[Lucid Dream]

5 minutes ago, Soni.exe said:

Ok, so last night I was chatting with Alan Denton on Twitter and he brought some insight on his, Hahn and Freiberger's involvement on the game.

He said that the 3 of them were only involved in writing the colorful commentary of the show's concept art, they had NO involvement with the story Pontaff and Guerrero wrote.

So that means, Pontac and Graff really did took the time to watch the show, picked on the mannerisms of the characters and brought that into the games without any involvement from the show staff.

I've gotta say, I'm proud of them for that. I really hope that if they are working on Project 2017's story; they put just as much effort into the game's story and characterization as they did for this game.

Wow, that makes me really happy to hear. That gives me a new sense of respect for them. For Sonic Colours, they openly admitted they knew absolutely nothing about Sonic and Tails. But It's really great seeing them learn from their mistakes, and trying to write a good story with the right characterisation for the characters, even if they don't care for the Sonic cast. 

Good job Pontac and Graff. Looking forward to more of their work if they continue to improve like this. 

[Shadowlax]

On 10/12/2016 at 7:15 PM, Lucid Dream said:

 even if they don't care for the Sonic cast. 

 

Is that true?

[FriendBot]

Not really, I recall in the only interview with Pontac (it will stay that because butthurt Adventure fans) that he's down with making use of the Sonic cast, specifically mentioned Shadow. But that's not his call though, it's all on Sonic Team.

[Lucid Dream]

9 hours ago, Shadowlax said:

Is that true?

http://forums.sega.com/showthread.php?505989-Ken-Pontac-one-of-the-2-writers-of-Colours-and-Lost-World-has-no-idea-who-Sonic-is!

Here they admit that they didn't play the games, don't particularly care about Sonic and pretty much made the entire cast in their own way. 

http://forums.sega.com/showthread.php?502696-Interview-with-Ken-Pontac-at-Youmacon-Used-Wikipedia-to-Research-the-Series

Here they admit that they didn't even know what the Adventure games were... And their research was based of some clips on Youtube and wikipedia (and clearly not very thoroughly if they didn't know about the Adventure series). 

It's pretty awful practice for writers to not even do adequate research into the characters and stories of the franchise they are writing for. But, apparently, they've done their work as professional writers and actually wrote Sonic Boom fire&Ice based off the TV series. 

[Salamander]

It's also pretty poor practice for Sega not to have given its new writing staff any kind of guidance or background resources to base their work on.  For instance, we know that there's a series bible, so were Pontac and Graff seriously not given it to read?  Or does it simply contain no information about characterisation and the plot of previous games?

To be clear, I'm not a fan of Pontac and Graff's work and think they were a poor fit for the series.  But it seems to me that the burden of responsibility for how they approached the series falls on Sega, and if they specifically hired new writers with a particular background and then gave them no support, it's because Sega themselves didn't really care about established material and wanted a soft reboot.

[Lucid Dream]

15 minutes ago, FFWF said:

It's also pretty poor practice for Sega not to have given its new writing staff any kind of guidance or background resources to base their work on.  For instance, we know that there's a series bible, so were Pontac and Graff seriously not given it to read?  Or does it simply contain no information about characterisation and the plot of previous games?

To be clear, I'm not a fan of Pontac and Graff's work and think they were a poor fit for the series.  But it seems to me that the burden of responsibility for how they approached the series falls on Sega, and if they specifically hired new writers with a particular background and then gave them no support, it's because Sega themselves didn't really care about established material and wanted a soft reboot.

I think they did imply they based Sonics personality on the series bible in the video.  

With Pontac and Graff being so lazy as to not even bother fully reading a wikipedia article on Sonic and it's series, I doubt they'd bother reading through an entire series bible. If you look at Sonic Generation, you'll see that Pontac and Graff knew the basics about the supporting cast (EG: Amy being Sonics obsessive fangirl, Blaze being reluctant to ask for help, etc), but they hadn't gone further than that. I'd say they basically did enough to fool Sega into thinking they knew what they were writing about.  

Yes, Sega was wrong for not being more strict on their writers and making sure that they were knowledgable on the series, but to say that the burden of responsibility falls on Sega and that they didn't care about the established material would be going way too far IMO. After all, it appears that Sega is actually making sure that they know what they are writing about now. 

[Shadowlax]

20 hours ago, Burning Dreams said:

I think they did imply they based Sonics personality on the series bible in the video.  

With Pontac and Graff being so lazy as to not even bother fully reading a wikipedia article on Sonic and it's series, I doubt they'd bother reading through an entire series bible. If you look at Sonic Generation, you'll see that Pontac and Graff knew the basics about the supporting cast (EG: Amy being Sonics obsessive fangirl, Blaze being reluctant to ask for help, etc), but they hadn't gone further than that. I'd say they basically did enough to fool Sega into thinking they knew what they were writing about.  

Yes, Sega was wrong for not being more strict on their writers and making sure that they were knowledgable on the series, but to say that the burden of responsibility falls on Sega and that they didn't care about the established material would be going way too far IMO. After all, it appears that Sega is actually making sure that they know what they are writing about now. 

Yeah I have to agree on this, sonic boom is kind of a giant monolith in representation of them caring. From what was communicated there were a lot of...restrictions placed on even small details of characters during development. And in the case of shadow, not only did they addlines to the japanese version of game to mitigate perceived damage to a valuable character, they theb preceded to change said character twice. Along with that I cant agree with the idea of a soft reboot, because they still acknowledges blaze in relation to sonic 06 and iirc shadow's game. I just think they werent paying attention to the writing got a lot of criticism, and they got a talking to.

In regards to think linked articles, yeah that explains that, not an excuse, but that explains it.

 

That said though I still think the fault lies on sega for not checking the writers sooner

[FriendBot]

Well this is a shocker, the Sonic YouTube channel posted a very accurate trailer for Fire & Ice just now.

It's just as beautiful as I remembered.

[Ellipsis-Ultima]

10 hours ago, Soni.exe said:

Well this is a shocker, the Sonic YouTube channel posted a very accurate trailer for Fire & Ice just now.

It's just as beautiful as I remembered.

> not a promo trailer for Season 2.

Dangit. 

But still, this one was too funny. Lost it at Roger the Craig Smith.

[Haalyle]

Oh man, that trailer had me in stitches, freakin' hilarious!

I know I already have Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice, but... I decided to buy Sonic Toon: Fire & Ice 25th Anniversary Set because I really love those acrylic figures and crystal! Should arrive in a month or so, can't wait!

[MudHunter]

The sales of the game according to vgchartz 

http://www.vgchartz.com/game/85638/sonic-boom-fire-amp-ice/

[Graystripe2000]

1 hour ago, MudHunter said:

The sales of the game according to vgchartz 

http://www.vgchartz.com/game/85638/sonic-boom-fire-amp-ice/

VGChartz isn't reliable. They've been proven to guess their sales numbers.

[Mad Convoy]

1 hour ago, MudHunter said:

The sales of the game according to vgchartz 

http://www.vgchartz.com/game/85638/sonic-boom-fire-amp-ice/

I wouldn't use VGchartz. The numbers it shows tend to be incredibly off when it isn't just showing the official sales number, which in turn has likely been reported on elsewhere on more reliable websites.

But Fire and Ice is ranked #60 best selling for the 3DS and ranks #1,180 in overall video game sales on Amazon. So take that as you will. https://www.amazon.com/Sonic-Boom-Fire-Ice-Nintendo-3DS/dp/B00ZZMIRDU

[Your Vest Friend]

#60 for 3DS is not impressive though.

And certainly the terrible performance in the UK charts holds at least some credence to the idea that it hasn't sold, especially in Europe (Japan can't be judged yet as it only came out yesterday there). 

[Graystripe2000]

Just now, VEDJ-F said:

#60 for 3DS is not impressive though.

And certainly the terrible performance in the UK charts holds at least some credence to the idea that it hasn't sold, especially in Europe (Japan can't be judged yet as it only came out yesterday there). 

Most Sonic games sell poorly in Japan, so I doubt it'll chart. 

[Mad Convoy]

5 minutes ago, VEDJ-F said:

#60 for 3DS is not impressive though.

And certainly the terrible performance in the UK charts holds at least some credence to the idea that it hasn't sold, especially in Europe (Japan can't be judged yet as it only came out yesterday there). 

Its not impressive, but I think its a stretch to say its outright bad. I mean, it did get in the top 100 and stay there since its release, and it charted in the UK (if I recall correctly, RoL/SC didn't). That seems to lend more credence to the idea that its having average sales (at least on a global scale) than poor sales.

I doubt it'll sell well in Japan since Japan isn't really into Sonic.

I wish SEGA would release some data itself so we don't have to do guesswork based on rankings and stuff. I'm sure people have purchased F&I elsewhere that needs to be factored in. Hopefully that'll come by the end of the year-- and hopefully after the price drop so we can factor in all the people who are just waiting for the game to be cheaper before purchasing.

[Your Vest Friend]

When Shattered Crystal came out, it entered the chart at #10 just like Fire and Ice. It fell down to #22 a week quicker than Fire and Ice, but it had competition from OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire, and Smash Bros 3DS was still relatively new. Fire and Ice opened to no competition bar some Dragon Quest game, and it still did nearly as badly. 

[Mad Convoy]

2 minutes ago, VEDJ-F said:

When Shattered Crystal came out, it entered the chart at #10 just like Fire and Ice. It fell down to #22 a week quicker than Fire and Ice, but it had competition from OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire, and Smash Bros 3DS was still relatively new. Fire and Ice opened to no competition bar some Dragon Quest game, and it still did nearly as badly. 

I see your point, but I think nearly is the key word there. It still did better than SC, and doing better for a few days can make a difference.

Still, I'm holding out for some concrete numbers from Sega.

[FriendBot]

I mean, it's not that surprising that F&I isn't be selling that well. While the poor reputation of the previous Boom games had a part in it, Fire & Ice is just an ok game. So not a whole lot of people are going to get the game right away, maybe things might pick up when a price drop occurs?

[Your Vest Friend]

Okay, so I think I figured out how VGChartz got their number...and unfortunately for those who wanted it to do well, there's truth to it.

The September NPD came out a week ago. One of the figures that became known was Dragon Quest 7 3DS, and that ended up selling 40k. Sonic Boom Fire and Ice came out at the same time and has consistently been lower in the UK charts than that, so it's not infeasible to think it'd sell lower in the US as well. So the maximum bar it can be (for US at least, but I can't see EU sales upping the number that much as Europe have just not latched onto Boom) is 40k, while VG have projected it at 30k. 

[Sonikko]

Kinda offtopic, but what if the Sonic Boom games took this direction

 

It looks similar to what they're going for, but executed a lot better and in a more clever way

[FriendBot]

Oh hey, Cartoon Network promoted Fire & Ice in their website.

[Dejimon11]

3 months after it's release date. By then people kinda forgot that the game existed.