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What are the consequences of Forces failing to sell?


Razule

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Now that it doesn't look like Forces is doing too ood, what exactly are the consequences of Forces probably not living up to SEGA's expectations? Would the budget of the next game be lowered? Would they be even less willing to take risks? Sonic Team being downsized?

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Sega has less money to fund future projects, especially projects that don't sell well or aren't received well, like Sonic Forces.

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31 minutes ago, Indigo Rush said:

Sega has less money to fund future projects, especially projects that don't sell well or aren't received well, like Sonic Forces.

So it's all good then.

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Honestly, I don't really know.

Knowing Sonic Team and Sega, they probably won't cancel anything they're currently working on (and if Unleashed, Colors, Generations, and Lost World's schedules are any indication, there probably has been something in the works that got started mid Forces development or around the time Forces development was started). They might tweak it in accordance to some things people liked about Forces or remove things people didn't like about Forces, but I don't see any major changes to these titles--- they're probably too far along on whatever the next planned Sonic game is anyway, assuming its happening and following the usual pattern for recent Sonic games' development, to make major changes anyway.

Honestly, its so common for people to assume that Sega only cares about how much money its projects make and will do a 360 on anything that underperforms. It has a precedent for the latter, sure, and yet at the same time the fact that Forces revisits concepts from unprofitable projects like 06 and tries to improve them and mix them with elements of profitable projects like Colors and Generations with some new ideas does make me wonder if that's what they're planning to do with Sonic titles from now on. Regardless of how well the end product does or did, I like the idea behind what Forces is trying to do with compiling the various concepts with potential that 3D Sonic had explored over the years, and I don't want that going away just because it got tied to a strongly polarizing game on the first try.

Yet again, a smart company tries to make products with value instead of solely aiming for profit-- this allows them to extract valuable things from failures or under-performances and pump them into future projects without the flaws of the failures/under-performances as opposed to just scrapping everything related to something that doesn't make money. And Sega is not a smart company. Though not as bad as Sega, Sonic Team is stupidity-prone as well.

So I assume it'll just carry on with whatever project is being worked on right now for Sonic until proven otherwise.

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Given how Forces itself already has significant cut corners in its design, I don't see how further limiting the resources for the next game would effectively amount to anything (anything positive, anyway).

A significant chunk of the game's assets and level themes are recycled from past games, and said assets/content are heavily reused throughout the game's levels.

The Hedgehog Engine 2 is an beefed-up variant of a last-generation engine, rather than sporting a modern engine that was either internally built from scratch or licensed out from a third-party studio.

The game immediately went back to the Boost gameplay after Lost World exchanged it in favor of doing something different, while also throwing in classic Sonic gameplay in the mix too; and doesn't really bother doing anything new or refined with both playstyles in the process.

The game's main concept, Eggman succeeding in taking over the world, is hardly capitalized in both the game's design and the story; same also applies with bringing back villains, exploring the Phantom Ruby's ability to create illusions, having Sonic's friends acting as a resistance group, or classic Sonic's presence in the story.

And this is after Lost World--a game that while it did take risks in its design, did also make changes that can be argued to be saving resources; ditching the Boost gameplay, going for a simpler, more stylized art direction, and borrowing many design cues from Mario (level themes, music, visuals, etc.) among other things.

At the rate Sonic Team are going, what else would there be restrict their resources on? The only thing left would be a QA team; and then reviewers and fans will all be primed and ready to spend another candlelit dinner and movie with yet another 2006/Rise of Lyric-tier rushed mess of a game. Not that it would probably matter much to the development team as it is anyway--this was the game they wanted to spend four years making and what they saw as fit for release.

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Sega has less money to fund projects in general and the franchise itself is likely to suffer from less backend resources next time around.

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I haven't actually played it, but if I had to guess, if they keep making flops, they be forced to let other companies be their developers. That is until they feel their money's back on track and they have a better management of the design teams.

At the same time, the constant twist on the formula should always be mixed reviews should be normal to SEGA by now. I think they'll still play the lottery by making twists.

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Sonic Forces released at a discounted price for a reason. Outside of developing the engine the game was obviously cheap AF to make. Many lifted assets, level and boss designs ripped from previous games, extremely short story, very little gameplay polishing, zero CGI, etc. 

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I can see Sega concentrating more on the mobile/tablet market. Forces Speed Battle seems to be doing OK (not Sonic Team, I know). 

I'm not sure how much they make out of ad revenue and sales for this and their Sega Forever line, but it must be more profitable than this. 

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8 hours ago, KHCast said:

Sega isn’t just sonic, and with persona 5 being the success it was, along with a few other franchises of theirs doing decent, I’m sure forces not selling well won’t bleed Sega to death or anything super serious 

Yes, but Sonic is also their most important IP, and probably the one that generates them the most profit. Even if they are doing decently with other franchises, they should at least be concerned if Forces fails to sell well. 

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30 minutes ago, FairPlay said:

Yes, but Sonic is also their most important IP, and probably the one that generates them the most profit

Sonic Mania excepting, I'd question how true this has been since, say... Generations.

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Sonic Team will probably end up shuttered by the end of the decade. Or only exist as a holding company ala RKO and Rankin-Bass. Sega will rely on other companies.

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26 minutes ago, Tornado said:

Sonic Mania excepting, I'd question how true this has been since, say... Generations.

Well, Sega have been pouring resources into Sonic because the games still generate profit, otherwise I don't think Sonic 4: Episode II, Lost World, Mania and Forces would have existed. Even if the games don't do as well as in the past, I think they're still an important income for Sega.

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40 minutes ago, Tornado said:

Sonic Mania excepting, I'd question how true this has been since, say... Generations.

If question that in general. Sonic is far from their money maker Sonic is just their mascot same as crash used to be to sony.  They have so many franchises they can dip into that sonic dying off would do next to noting.  Persona. Jet set. Armored core.  vector. Among others I'd have to look up to list them all. Granted I do want more all star racing  before I die

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If the games didn't generate profit, Sega would simply let the franchise die off, and they have done that in the past: As an example, Alex Kidd wasn't profitable nor popular, as such, that franchise died off and was replaced with Sonic. I say that it generates them the most profit because it's true, they have far more Sonic games than any of their other IPs, and that's because they still sell, even if they don't do as well as in the past, as I said before. Maybe "pouring resources" is exaggerated, I agree, but that doesn't mean they don't do it at all.

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You should pick an argument. No one is saying that Sonic games aren't profitable, (though Sonic Boom probably wasn't) so arguing that they must be or Sega wouldn't keep making them is meaningless for this discussion. The matter at hand is whether Sonic is Sega's most important, most profitable IP. It's definitely not their best selling, and hasn't been since Sonic Generations; so now the question is whether Sega releasing yearly sports games that sell a million copies every time make them less profit than selling Sonic games every two years that... um... haven't really come close to a million copies since 2011.

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I feel like even if the last few games have been duds, Sega would've likely still made a lot of money off of the Sonic franchise just from merchandise of the series. It's sort of one of those juggernauts.

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19 hours ago, FairPlay said:

Well, Sega have been pouring resources into Sonic because the games still generate profit, otherwise I don't think Sonic 4: Episode II, Lost World, Mania and Forces would have existed. Even if the games don't do as well as in the past, I think they're still an important income for Sega.

Ep III was cancelled because Ep II failed to sell. Ep I likely sold more on its name than anything else. But people wised up after playing it.

Lost World was part of their exclusivity deal with Nintendo, whether it sold well on a doomed system or not wasn't that relevant to them.

I'm sure they made Forces with the expectation of some profit, but its not clear that even modest expectations were met there. Generations did decently, so doing a generations rehash was probably considered safe. Rehashing a failed rehash less so.

Mania was a fairly cheap gamble that paid off extremely well. So we will probably see some more games in that style at least.

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When Mania and Forces were announced as the 25th Anniversary titles, I was immediately going for Forces, since I've always preferred 3D Sonic and the more serious story/character centralised concept. As the trailers and news arrived one after another, I was still on the same opinion, I was more interested in Forces. My conclusion was, however, to buy Sonic Mania and not Forces, and to my own surprise I don't regret it. I think Mania is made with so much more interest and ambition which makes the game full of life, vivid and fresh but still loyal to the Sonic legacy. I really like the ideas of Forces, the Avatar, the more serious story (attempt) and that they (probably?) took the idea of the Freedom Fighters, which are all awesome advancements of 3D Sonic, but still the game lacks the spirit and it's probably caused by the design. The animations and dialogs are a bit lifeless to me, the levels aren't so great and they don't have the spirit that Mania has.

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On ‎25‎/‎12‎/‎2017 at 4:18 PM, Tornado said:

You should pick an argument. No one is saying that Sonic games aren't profitable, (though Sonic Boom probably wasn't) so arguing that they must be or Sega wouldn't keep making them is meaningless for this discussion. The matter at hand is whether Sonic is Sega's most important, most profitable IP. It's definitely not their best selling, and hasn't been since Sonic Generations; so now the question is whether Sega releasing yearly sports games that sell a million copies every time make them less profit than selling Sonic games every two years that... um... haven't really come close to a million copies since 2011.

Well, Sonic is on the list of best-selling videogame franchises (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_game_franchises), and they have made more money off this series more than with any other, counting all of the media Sonic has appeared in, spinoffs, merchandise, etcetera.

Again, I said "probably", because I'm not interested in Sega's modern IPs aside Sonic, but reading these articles prove that Sonic's still up there, even if it's not at the first place (though I really doubt Football Manager can replace Sonic), with Sonic still being an important income for Sega. Though I admit it's no longer the most profitable, the games still manage to sell somewhat decently.

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