New Sonic Games Delayed to 2022

[Wraith]

 

From Global Licensed magazine. Anyone could guess this after SEGA implied that delays were happening due to Covid, but it's nice ot have it confirmed.

2022 will be one of the biggest years for Sonic in a while with Sonic Prime, the new film, and multiple games launching.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Oh these boards are gonna go crazy over these upcoming months without enough of a Sonic fix.

At least they’re not rushing as they used to in the past.

[HPX]

I sleep. 

[azoo]

Most expectations I have for this year at this point is just a repeat of 2016 where they don’t do anything but announce stuff coming out over a year from then.

Which I mean, fine by me, but you could at least communicate that’s what you’re doing earlier instead of starting yet another big anniversary campaign rollout only to sit around and pick your nose when people ask you what’s up. 

[FReaK]

but..how can you delay something that is not even announced yet?

we all need to come down. there will be a new game and sega will show it once it is ready to be shown. sure, it's his 30th this year, but I really don't want another forces. give them all the time they need.

[Blue Blood]

1 minute ago, FReaK said:

but..how can you delay something that is not even announced yet?

we all need to come down. there will be a new game and sega will show it once it is ready to be shown. sure, it's his 30th this year, but I really don't want another forces. give them all the time they need.

So companies set release dates/periods for projects long before they're announced to the public. SEGA had to push back half of its new games for the 2020/21 fiscal year because of the pandemic, and it goes without saying that that would have a knock-on effect to the 2021/22 year as well at least. If any Sonic game was due for release this year or even last year, it's very likely that is been pushed back. The subject matter of this thread confirms that even.

[azoo]

19 minutes ago, FReaK said:

 sure, it's his 30th this year, but I really don't want another forces. give them all the time they need.

..Huh? Forces didn’t come out on the 25th anniversary either, it got announced an entire year to year-and-a-half early and dropped late 2017 (much like what they’re probably gonna do this year too). 

[Scritch the Cat]

8 hours ago, azoo said:

Most expectations I have for this year at this point is just a repeat of 2016 where they don’t do anything but announce stuff coming out over a year from then.

Which I mean, fine by me, but you could at least communicate that’s what you’re doing earlier instead of starting yet another big anniversary campaign rollout only to sit around and pick your nose when people ask you what’s up. 

Essentially that is my opinion too.  I don’t at all hold wanting to be safely isolated against SEGA, so some delays are understandable, but what irritates me a lot more is the long period of silence during which we had no idea what if anything was going forward, and how long it took them to even admit that there’d be a delay past this year.  It’s as if they want to make their Sonic brand look good but can’t be bothered to display anything good, so instead they’ve just tried hiding things that look bad.  Certainly, they shouldn’t release a game this year if that game isn’t finished, but there are so many other things they could be doing to celebrate Sonic’s 30th Anniversary that it feels like the only reason they aren’t is that they don’t want to call attention to how there isn’t a game ready this year.

[Salamander]

Not surprising, not even wrong, but still disappointing - if only in the sense that it means we'll have to wait even longer for something, anything to happen.  Unusually restrained, considering that they were on the verge of at least teasing something a year ago; but I have to assume they're now following what seems also to be Nintendo's current strategy of announcing things only when they're very, very sure when it's going to come out.

[King Conne]

OH no, I'm fed up with anniversary games!!...
I takes too much time... give us at least a "spin-off" game in 2021 (a fighting game by Sumo Digital for instance)!!...

[KHCast]

Apparently according to Zippo this is all outdated information that we're misreading, but seeing as how silent sega has been despite all the leaks, I’m lead to lean more towards believing this information holds some level of weight to where Sega is currently. Idk, just strange that Sega haven’t just come out yet to say SOMETHING and continue to play this cloak and dagger shit that’s helping no one really 

[charmsb]

3 hours ago, KHCast said:

Apparently according to Zippo this is all outdated information that we're misreading, but seeing as how silent sega has been despite all the leaks, I’m lead to lean more towards believing this information holds some level of weight to where Sega is currently. Idk, just strange that Sega haven’t just come out yet to say SOMETHING and continue to play this cloak and dagger shit that’s helping no one really 

Not sure why everyone is placing their trust in that guy so much. I think I'm gonna trust an official, concrete flyer and not a random leaker.

Anyways, I honestly don't care, as long as we get an announcement this year so we have things to chew on.

[Chili Dawg]

Are the only Sonic games from now to the end of the time going to be anniversary celebrations that don't even come out on the anniversary?

I get that makes me sound impatient and entitled, and, look, I'm not saying I want them to rush shit out, and I get that this year in particular is a special case with the pandemic but like... oof.

[Wraith]

I was completely apathetic to their last couple of releases. Another game like that would be pretty close to releasing nothing to me, so I don't mind the wait.

They can take as many anniversaries as they want, whatever it takes to have a Sonic game that's interesting.

[Scritch the Cat]

51 minutes ago, Wraith said:

I was completely apathetic to their last couple of releases. Another game like that would be pretty close to releasing nothing to me, so I don't mind the wait.

They can take as many anniversaries as they want, whatever it takes to have a Sonic game that's interesting.

Don't expect society as a whole to be that liberal.  As well as the Sonic movie did and the IDW series is doing, spin-offs and adaptations won't survive long if the game core of this franchise goes away. 

And though I agree with you about the last couple of releases, Sonic Forces has problems besides being half-assed and having shoddy physics; namely it is conceptually lacking.  Iizuka's decision to make Modern Sonic's gameplay more automated so it's accessible to more people backfired and made it duller, and the attempt at a serious plot was undermined by writing and gameplay mechanics that didn't mesh with it.  So to put it bluntly, I personally do not feel like waiting another half-decade or more for the next game because it takes more than work to make a Sonic game that's interesting; it takes understanding that their design philosophy is a bad one, and the sooner SEGA can demonstrate that, the better.  It doesn't even have to be via a completed game; it could just be revealing what their plans are. 

Of course, as willing as I am to salute such a show of good faith, it does hinge on whether they actually do understand that many people don't like how Forces turned out.  It remains a big worry of mine that the real reason they aren't sharing much about this game isn't because the pandemic put it far behind schedule; it's because it's conceptually just more of the same old shit that people are tired of and SEGA doesn't want its reputation to suffer from a deluge of online hazing.

[azoo]

Sonic just sucks man. Has for quite a long time now.

It’s hard to justify being impatient when they’ve done about nothing but let us down besides Mania (which only half-counts) and yet it’s also hard to justify staying patient when their whole fan base is built on peoples patience being tried. There’s just not a good angle about it. 

[Scritch the Cat]

1 hour ago, azoo said:

Sonic just sucks man. Has for quite a long time now.

It’s hard to justify being impatient when they’ve done about nothing but let us down besides Mania (which only half-counts) and yet it’s also hard to justify staying patient when their whole fan base is built on peoples patience being tried. There’s just not a good angle about it. 

Yeah; if this was most other companies and most other franchises (though certainly not all of either) I would give them the benefit of the doubt regarding a big delay.  This is because most others left off on a good note.  If Nintendo says they're taking a long time to complete a game because they want to make it good, I can believe them because they don't have much record of releasing broken and unfinished games.  I don't know what next Mario game will be like, but I'm pretty confident it won't suck.  But SEGA has let people down so often that a long spell without any Sonic news is hard to read as anything but evidence that they don't really care about Sonic anymore.  They maybe care enough to get Sonic out of the butt of numerous online jokes, but all you ultimately need to accomplish that is to stop giving people new things to work with, which can take the form of either not releasing any Sonic games or releasing Sonic games that are just mediocre and forgettable.  For people who actually care to play good Sonic games, they aren't doing nearly enough, and the pandemic can't be their only excuse for that because they already weren't years before it hit. 

And to be blunt, this series has conceptually erred so many times that I think it's a bad idea to commit to years of development invisible to the public; that'll just run them the risk of committing to an idea people actually hate, and be completely oblivious to that until it's too late to fix it.  Taking half a decade to make a game is okay in some cases but before they commit to a game that takes that long they should recognize that a lot of people aren't happy with the series' current direction and do some surveys, proof-of-concept demos, public pitches, etc, to gauge what will actually be successful.

[Dr. Detective]

If they're gone for half a decade and we end up with another Forces, that'll be the official word on it being time to give up.

That'd honestly feel almost worse than the time during the mid-2000s where they were relentlessly pumping out game after game after game all in the span of a single year.

Some of those were good and all of them had more replay value than Forces if you actually liked whatever game it was.

This opposite period where things are taking longer, there's less playtime, less characters, less story, and no update to the art-style or art-direction just feels worse.

I know I shouldn't have to choose between the two but at this point I think I've lost the last fuck I can give so I'll just say it; I'd gladly play another Shadow the Hedgehog if the only alternative was another game where its most interesting feature was the fact that it technically functioned well.

Maybe one day I'll regret saying that. I left the monkey's paw in the other room so I didn't see if it curled or not but they've made these 2.5D Sonic games so boring now. I can't stand it.

[Sega DogTagz]

I'd still be surprised if we didn't get something this year, if only for momentum purposes. A spin-off, a remake, whatever.

 

Honestly from a business standpoint, it makes sense to push the larger productions to 2022 at this point. The first movie was such a success that the second will be hard to ignore. You'll want to bracket the film with releases to maximize synergy. A critical darling a month or two before (*coughMania2cough*) and then a follow up to rake in the attention a month or two after the film.

[Rabbitearsblog]

Honestly, I don't mind the Sonic games being delayed, despite the fact that this is Sonic's 30th anniversary.  I don't know, SEGA always had a bad habit of delaying their anniversary games a year after their official anniversary year.  Anyway, as long as the game is good, I don't mind it being delayed as long as SEGA takes their time with the new game.

I think that the real question here is did SEGA learned from their mistakes when they did Sonic Forces?  I mean, it's good that they aren't rushing out a new game just to get it out this year, which is what plagued Sonic Forces when they tried to rush the game out instead of taking their time with making the game.  But, does SEGA understand that some of the problems with Sonic Forces also dealt with the bad storytelling and some bad portrayals of the characters (Tails was hit the hardest with this)?  Will the next Sonic game actually have good gameplay, storytelling and characterizations done right?  It's hard to tell because we don't know if SEGA learned their lesson or are actually trying to make some much needed changes to the franchise.

While it's great that there's a lot of focus on the Sonic movie sequel, Sonic Prime and the merchandising,  SEGA really needs to start making good Sonic games again by reevaluating the past decade with the franchise and figure out what needs to change to put the franchise in a much better spot, video game wise.

[Detective Kaito]

Five years is the longest wait ever for a mainline Sonic game, and sadly we have zero reason to believe it's going to be a good game. I don't even know why it's taking them this long, unless they're doing some sort of open world game which they can't handle.

I am interested in seeing what excuse they'll come up with if the game still remains unfinished like Forces, though. Next year is gonna be wild for Sonic if they don't delay everything again.

[Gabz Girl]

I can’t believe it’s been almost 4 years since Sonic Forces and Sega still has not given any kind of assurance that this next Sonic game will be a VAST improvement over the previous one. Well maybe they have but honestly I haven’t been catching up on Sonic news lately because, you know, there is barely any!

I also don’t understand why they’ve been so quiet, especially now with this sudden Twitter post claiming a 2022 delay on new Sonic games. Just...come out and confirm it yourself man. It’s ridiculous how quiet they are, like Sega is embarrassed about Sonic or something lol. 
 

Not to mention it’s Sonic’s 30th this year and we got just over a month until “the birthday.” I’m...kinda fed up of waiting is all I’m saying, that and I’m afraid I have very little confidence in Sega that they have learned anything since Sonic Forces and even TSR. Guess we’ll see soon enough though. 

[HPX]

4 hours ago, Gabz Girl said:

It’s ridiculous how quiet they are, like Sega is embarrassed about Sonic or something lol. 

Bingo. 

We've enough indication to conclude what with the departure of Naka and their subsequent inability to replicate the most fundamental Sonic gameplay, the series has been lost and its repeated, spectacularly historic failures has to have have frightened them into the belief that there's no saving the brand beyond where they've settled. 

Let's not forget that while Mania sold well, it didn't sell that well compared to other games that year. I suspect that, both as a consequence of just not bothering to put out game releases consistently anymore, the bulk of the franchise revenue comes from merch/multimedia. And at this point, if that's enough, what reason should they have to go "kicking a hornets' nest" with a concerted game effort when nearly every attempt in the last fifteen years has been met with either derision or apathy? The brand has been mismanaged for so long, I suspect the damage must seem irreparable to them at this point. 

The only chance Sonic has is a radical shift in approach, in staff, and in priority. But there's little incentive to all that effort when Football Manager and Yakuza are the reliable breadwinners.

This news isn't surprising, but the continued silence is increasingly frustrating and bizarre. Especially after Forces. 

[Red Hot Jack]

They are often scared of fans and critics reaction, like, highly and easily terrified.

IMO they are just holding their stuff until most of the work is done, taking their time as requested, it's not like Sonic is having an awful commercial period right now, maybe they just don't want to ruin it.

Or, they are afraid that not much is coming this year and that will officially turn people off, not sure... they can always announce stuff that is coming in 2022 as well.

[Wraith]

Saying that they're "embarrassed" is an over-reaction since the brand is in a pretty healthy spot. Everything they've released in the past 5 years has done well except maybe TSR, but they're not being being very forthcoming about those numbers so I can't even say for sure.

It's true that SEGA doesn't feel the need to invest in Sonic anymore but that's because they've got a lot more viable franchises to rely on now compared to last decade. That's a good thing in terms of variety, and as video games balloon to an unsustainable level in scope I'm actually thankful to sega for being conservative and creating hits on a small scale.

As a Sonic fan...yeah I do miss the bigger projects, but it ultimately wasn't a healthy direction for the series so I understand how they got here. Much as I would like a new Sonic on par with Ratchet and Clank or Crash 4, I could accept a low fidelity direction for the series if it wasn't so boring mechanically. 

I want them to invest more in marketing/outreach than anything else. Too many people I know weren't really aware Sonic was still around until that film came out.