What happened to the Spin offs?

[DabigRG]

I feel like we talked about this before, but Sega could honestly just give the rights to produce a spin-off to whoever and let them handle most of the development while they focus on the main series. They'd get the final say on what is actually usable in the game, but that's no different from Mania, IDW and if I had to guess, TSR.

[Stritix]

The Sonic series just doesn't have the same amount of resources these days it had put into it in the 2000's. There's no budget for spin-offs. The main games are already drastically scaled back. Team Sonic Racing was incredibly lacking in content and was dropped as soon as it was released with no ongoing updates

Edited December 29, 2020 by Stritix

[FlameStream]

It's also partly an industry-wide issue. The B-budget games/studios have disappeared when game budget/demands could not make the cut anymore.

[Multikaris]

49 minutes ago, FlameStream said:

It's also partly an industry-wide issue. The B-budget games/studios have disappeared when game budget/demands could not make the cut anymore.

Many B-to-D grade studios were killed over the 2010s due to the harshness of the industry, leaving a gap for indies to grow. Remember Griptonite? Blue Tongue? And yes, companies like EA killed a lot of them, but many others just off and died.

[thumbs13]

On 12/15/2020 at 6:37 AM, Roger_van_der_weide said:

Since most of the spinoff games were on handhelds, I'd say the death of handhelds caused the death of Spinoff games.
 

Yeah, without handhelds to put games on, the content shifted to other media. So instead we'll just have mobile games like Speed Battle and Dash.

[Roger_van_der_weide]

True, technically the mobile phone games are the spinoff replacements. Yet I rarely see them in that light, considering them more a sibling to Sonic monopoly or other board games rather then a full fletched game. Don't know why. Probably because of their limited amount of own personality, indepth gameplay, level design, story, unique levels and music. There's always something missing. And sometimes they do have a spinoff worthy amount of music of music (Runners) but nothing else, sometimes a spinoff worthy amount of story (Olympics) and nothing else, but it's rarely the full package.
Despite playing it longer, I don't think Sonic Dash or Forces battle will ever apepar in the same mental list as Sonic Triple trouble, Advance and Rush ever will.

Not that Sega cares, the phone games likely made more profit then any handheld game ever did.
Good for Sega, sucks for us.
Guess we have Fangames to fill the void.

Oh well, the spin offs were already on the way out, just being watered down versions of the main games just so Sega can add the salesnumbers of both games together and make their game's succes look bigger for the stockholders.
Sucks for them Sonic 06 was such a disaster or I bet they'd call their new games plain "Sonic the hedgehog" more often.
NEW GAME HUGE SUCCES! It's been on sale for 10 minutes and it already sold 32 million copies! (Spread across the original 1991, Master system/ game gear port, 2006 reboot and the 2 new copies the new game sold)

[Kuzu]

3 hours ago, Roger_van_der_weide said:

True, technically the mobile phone games are the spinoff replacements. Yet I rarely see them in that light, considering them more a sibling to Sonic monopoly or other board games rather then a full fletched game. Don't know why. Probably because of their limited amount of own personality, indepth gameplay, level design, story, unique levels and music. There's always something missing. And sometimes they do have a spinoff worthy amount of music of music (Runners) but nothing else, sometimes a spinoff worthy amount of story (Olympics) and nothing else, but it's rarely the full package.
Despite playing it longer, I don't think Sonic Dash or Forces battle will ever apepar in the same mental list as Sonic Triple trouble, Advance and Rush ever will.

 Because in our old fashioned ass brains, we don't register mobile games as "real" games. We treat them like they're just minor distractions.

But this is basically ignoring the reality that mobile games are the most popular in the market. They're simple to make and appeal to people who don't play video games. 

We scoff at that stuff because these mobile games lack the stuff we'd expect in a console game. But the fact of the matter is, Sega have probably made more from Sonic Dash and Speed Battle than they've ever made from any mainline game.

 

Which is annoying to think about, but its true.

[Eurisko]

Isn't Team Sonic Racing a spin-off? 

[DabigRG]

2 hours ago, Eurisko said:

Isn't Team Sonic Racing a spin-off? 

It is the exception, not the rule.

[Multikaris]

6 hours ago, DabigRG said:

It is the exception, not the rule.

The exception that proves the rule, no less. The game was abandoned right after launch and has minimal content.

[Red Hot Jack]

They have resources now for more and better spin-off. TSR sold well miraculously since CTR was the big threat in that period, Sonic was back in the top charts for a month since 2008, if anything they promoted the game surprisingly well, and that somewhat payed off. Then they did re-releases during Christmas, and now the big movie bump in sales. It did well, I'm sure they have money now for a new spin-off.

They could also make a TSR sequel with more content, they are aware people wanted more out of the game, since it had a good gameplay, good ideas and just needed more meat, they didn't want to make DLC so make a sequel. I wouldn't mind it...