Why is Sonic Team struggling with releasing good remasters of the Sonic games?

[Rabbitearsblog]

So, there's been a lot of controversy lately about how the Sonic remasters are being handled.  Like for example, there was the whole controversy with Sonic Colors Ultimate with some behind the scenes drama with Blind Squirrel and the game came out unfinished and now, we are having some drama with Sonic Origins, with even the people working on the game talking about how the game didn't come out the way that they pitched it to Sonic Team.  So, what's exactly going on with the remasters of these games and why are they always coming out unfinished?

[Wittymations]

Despite being arguably easier than full-on remakes, which is completely different than a remaster, a remaster still comes with their own technical challenges.

The reality is that a game is designed with a specific set of consoles in mind. Porting them over and introducing new features or graphical fidelity to a new hardware to actually warrant people's desire to purchase a new re-release of games is actually surprisingly difficult to do. Combined with the reality that a company is on a deadline and there's a number of other projects that need attention, things get, for the lack of a better word, fuckitty-wukkity.

This isn't unique to SEGA, it's a thing present in a lot of companies. It's true that some are half-hearted cash grabs, usually be management that couldn't care less, but no individual developer probably wants to have "I worked on x game remaster/remake that bombed" as part of their resume.

Now, some remasters do very well, like to Mass Effect Legendary Edition, and some remakes do well, like Destroy All Humans. But yeah, individual hardware needs and time constraints is usually the reason.

[azoo]

They're Sonic Team. They struggle with releasing good anything.

[Sega DogTagz]

Colors had a decent enough excuse built in. Wii architecture is widely known not to play nice with other consoles of the same era, let alone modern ones. Bridging that gap must have been a pain and a half for anybody to tackle.

[Shade Vortex]

I figure budget and time constraints are the biggest issue, and those likely come from higher up than Sonic Team. The execs/shareholders in charge of SEGA's financial decisions are clearly trying to spend as little money/time on things that they don't think are worth more of an investment, such as ports and remakes/remasters, which have a history of selling less than the original game(s) did in almost every case I can think of, so it's not like they did so without merit.

In other words, it's just another unfortunate consequence of how the games industry's (or really, any corporate-driven entity's) worst aspects continue to ruin things that could have been amazing if not for such decisions.

[Rabbitearsblog]

3 hours ago, Wittymations said:

Despite being arguably easier than full-on remakes, which is completely different than a remaster, a remaster still comes with their own technical challenges.

The reality is that a game is designed with a specific set of consoles in mind. Porting them over and introducing new features or graphical fidelity to a new hardware to actually warrant people's desire to purchase a new re-release of games is actually surprisingly difficult to do. Combined with the reality that a company is on a deadline and there's a number of other projects that need attention, things get, for the lack of a better word, fuckitty-wukkity.

This isn't unique to SEGA, it's a thing present in a lot of companies. It's true that some are half-hearted cash grabs, usually be management that couldn't care less, but no individual developer probably wants to have "I worked on x game remaster/remake that bombed" as part of their resume.

Now, some remasters do very well, like to Mass Effect Legendary Edition, and some remakes do well, like Destroy All Humans. But yeah, individual hardware needs and time constraints is usually the reason.

 

25 minutes ago, Shade Vortex said:

I figure budget and time constraints are the biggest issue, and those likely come from higher up than Sonic Team. The execs/shareholders in charge of SEGA's financial decisions are clearly trying to spend as little money/time on things that they don't think are worth more of an investment, such as ports and remakes/remasters, which have a history of selling less than the original game(s) did in almost every case I can think of, so it's not like they did so without merit.

In other words, it's just another unfortunate consequence of how the games industry's (or really, any corporate-driven entity's) worst aspects continue to ruin things that could have been amazing if not for such decisions.

I agree that budget constraints and time constraints are huge factors in these remasters not doing so well, in terms of quality.  I never understood why SEGA didn't just give Sonic Team or anyone else working with them more time to improve these remasters instead of rushing them out like that.  They could earn more money from these remasters if they were in better conditions.

[Mangoaxe5]

5 hours ago, Wittymations said:

 

This isn't unique to SEGA, it's a thing present in a lot of companies.

Most companies don't struggle with rereleasing their games. Nintendo sure doesn't.

[DaBigJ]

They know fans will buy anything.

 

On a serious note, it's as simple as the "we got to get this shit out at this exact date and we're not delaying jack shit" mentality that SEGA (not just Sonic Team) has. Considering the most recent Sonic game that ever got delayed (to my knowledge) was Team Sonic Racing, and considering how that delay did...nothing-ish things to the game, I have to assume that even if something like Colors Ultimate got delayed it would still be what it ended up as.

Honestly, this issue wouldn't be as bad if they kept patching Colors Ultimate to be a better product. Now, I haven't played Ultimate yet so I can't speak definitively on the quality of it, but based on what I've seen in reviews and general gameplay...yeah it looks a bit borked, but it could be fixed with patches...yet it didn't get a lot of it. There's still a bunch of weird oddities that haven't been patched (one review from RadicalSoda showed Sonic's head being detatched from his body briefly, but I'm not entirely sure if that happened to others) and it's saddening.

Origins, despite my bitching, is a major step up from Ultimate, but it still needs a bit of fine tuning (based on what others experienced, at least). Hopefully the upcoming patch does the game justice, right? However I hope it's not the last patch, I hope that they continue to make Origins the best it can be, because I know there was passion behind it, especially from Headcannon, they just weren't given enough time initially (assuming they're involved with the patch).

So it's not so much a struggle, it's more like a rush. SEGA wants games out on specific dates, and they will do whatever it takes to get there, even if by cutting corners on development, while also not taking the time post-launch to continuously patch the remasters up more to make the package better. 

 

Spoiler

There's also, y'know, this

5 hours ago, azoo said:

They're Sonic Team. They struggle with releasing good anything.

 

 

[Sean]

5 hours ago, azoo said:

They're Sonic Team. They struggle with releasing good anything.

Yeah this. It's not really rocket science, Sega rushes all their Sonic projects and has no regard for polish whatsoever. There are bad remasters all around outside of Sonic but in this case it's down to Sega literally not caring.

[JezMM]

5 hours ago, Rabbitearsblog said:

I agree that budget constraints and time constraints are huge factors in these remasters not doing so well, in terms of quality.  I never understood why SEGA didn't just give Sonic Team or anyone else working with them more time to improve these remasters instead of rushing them out like that.  They could earn more money from these remasters if they were in better conditions.

This is very easy to say when you're not the one spending money creating the game, but things aren't always that simple on the other side.

Let's say in it's current state, SEGA spent 5 money on an imperfect port of Colours that earned them 8 money. Their profit, 3 money.

When fans suggest they should just delay the game until it's in a better state, what they may well be suggesting would manifest as SEGA spending 8 money on a perfect port of Colours that earns them 10 money in the end.  Their profit, 2 money.  From this simple perspective, the first option seems more reasonable right?

It of course, makes sense for them to cut their losses and get the product out the door one it's in a state they think they can get away with than just keep on funnelling time and money into it until it's perfect.

Of course, even in this gross simplification, things are more complicated than that.  You could argue that perhaps in the long run, the series maintaining an excellent reputation would be worth that loss of 1 money in the second scenario.  Confidence is boosted in the series and they earn that 1 money back and some more on the next project instead.

But again... it depends on how much they can afford to invest in the future, vs how much they need money to come in now.

 

 

Of course, I think it's valid to wish these ports got the treatment they deserves as works of art, I sure do too.  I just don't expect it because SEGA isn't giving us Sonic content out of charity, it's a business.  And I can hardly say they made the wrong decision to release these titles in the state they did because... I was willing to buy them, just as they figured.

[Sega DogTagz]

3 hours ago, Jake_LeOFFICIAL said:

On a serious note, it's as simple as the "we got to get this shit out at this exact date and we're not delaying jack shit" mentality that SEGA (not just Sonic Team) has.

 

Sonic Frontiers - Delayed more than a year

Sonic Origins - Never publicly stated, but almost certainly had a significant delay due to dev turmoil

Sonic Mania - Delayed three months

TSR - Delayed five months

 

 

 SEGA has no problem pushing back release dates, and often does so with a press released claiming a need for greater quality.  They don't shove half finished projects out the door like they did back in the day. This isn't a stubborn, deadline demanding situation like your describing.

 

Just like @JezMM laid out before there is a cost/benefit analysis to be made with these decisions. Once you get to a certain point, you gotta make the call to move on. If a game isn't done and it needs more time in the oven, then pushing it back is the right call. But if it is done, and still has some edges that need sanding down, then some exec is gonna need to weigh the pro's and con's of getting it out the door. Collections like Origins will sell to their target audience without the need for over the top polish.

 

 

 

 

[Kuzu]

4 hours ago, Sean said:

Yeah this. It's not really rocket science, Sega rushes all their Sonic projects and has no regard for polish whatsoever. There are bad remasters all around outside of Sonic but in this case it's down to Sega literally not caring.

While I do recognize there are more extenuating circumstances, this is basically the cut and dry version of it. They just don't give a damn. This is how they've always handled anything Sonic related, and how they'll keep doing so.

[Sonikko]

2 hours ago, Sega DogTagz said:

Sonic Frontiers - Delayed more than a year

Sonic Origins - Never publicly stated, but almost certainly had a significant delay due to dev turmoil

Sonic Mania - Delayed three months

TSR - Delayed five months

 SEGA has no problem pushing back release dates, and often does so with a press released claiming a need for greater quality.  They don't shove half finished projects out the door like they did back in the day. This isn't a stubborn, deadline demanding situation like your describing.

Just like @JezMM laid out before there is a cost/benefit analysis to be made with these decisions. Once you get to a certain point, you gotta make the call to move on. If a game isn't done and it needs more time in the oven, then pushing it back is the right call. But if it is done, and still has some edges that need sanding down, then some exec is gonna need to weigh the pro's and con's of getting it out the door. Collections like Origins will sell to their target audience without the need for over the top polish.

In the case of Origins, Stealth explicitly said on Twitter they asked for a delay and it was not granted, so I feel like you're off there.

Also keep in mind they were forced to delay Frontiers because Covid got in the way, Colors Ultimate was delayed as well internally, it was slated for release in 2020, initially.

The issue here is not that they don't delay the games, it's that their initial scheduled releases are just plain unreasonable and unrealistic. So when a game gets delayed, it's still gonna come out underbaked, because the delay didn't add enough dev time to the initial rushed release date.

That said, I feel like with Origins it was just a lack of care from the publisher, it clearly needed more time in the oven to smooth things out, and I do not think the current Sonic Team is great on the technical side of things, most of the current games seem to be held together by duct tape.

But, with Colors Ultimate it's a whole other issue, I don't understand where people are getting the "Wii architecture is hard to deal with" when there are plenty of Wii games that have been ported to modern architectures successfully with none of the issues Ultimate had.

The issue there was the team choosing to go with Godot instead of porting the original engine, or using HE2 (which is not just a graphics engine, as the fanbase seems to have agreed on lately, as it's divided in 2 branches I think, one of which handles graphics/lighting, one is for gameplay and physics). Blind Squirrel has never had a good release, even the ones that are praised like the Mass Effect remasters, are still pretty divisive, all things considered.

So, the short answer to the initial question is just poor management, the same exact thing the main series struggles with. The people that handle the money at Sega do not give a damn about the quality of a product, and will just scam people out of their money at the first chance they get by using a friendly blue hedgehog render on the cover of their game.

[Sega DogTagz]

18 minutes ago, Sonikko said:

In the case of Origins, Stealth explicitly said on Twitter they asked for a delay and it was not granted, so I feel like you're off there.

They he did, but as you may recall much prior to all that Sega went absolute radio silence on Origins for more than half a year and there were numerous rumblings that something was broken about the game internally. 

 

18 minutes ago, Sonikko said:

Also keep in mind they were forced to delay Frontiers because Covid got in the way, Colors Ultimate was delayed as well internally, it was slated for release in 2020, initially.

Covid didn't help the situation - but during a shareholder meeting a Sega rep specifically said that Frontiers was being delayed to "brush up the quality". Colors also shared many of the same internal rumblings we saw in Origins.

 

18 minutes ago, Sonikko said:

But, with Colors Ultimate it's a whole other issue, I don't understand where people are getting the "Wii architecture is hard to deal with" when there are plenty of Wii games that have been ported to modern architectures successfully with none of the issues Ultimate had.

 

No one said it was impossible, just that it created added difficulty. I mean, you don't have to look much farther than Big Red Button to get a prime example of what happens when you try to cram a square peg into a round hole. Trying to port between two systems (in that case PC and WiiU) the system architecture just isn't always compatible. Dev time gets eaten up just trying to get the thing to run properly - and they couldn't even do that to be honest.

[Duelistic Nature]

This may sound incredibly naive of me, but what if it's less SEGA not caring, but Sonic Team not knowing how to scope how big the project will be? SEGA for all intents and purposes is a publisher, they couldn't care less about the workload that comes with a new project as long as it doesn't cost them more money than they have the scope in investing for it.

Sonic Team is tasked to make a project, but don't they have a say if the project is feasible in the allotted time frame?

I am aware it's the dilemma that an artist/designer group has about making a deadline and getting as much quality/product into a project to make the shareholders happy. Doesn't Sonic team as artists/ designers group have a say if the project is beyond the scope SEGA has in mind?

Is the situation that bad that SEGA, the IP holder of the Sonic brand, has a zero-tolerance policy for their design teams not agreeing with their master plans? (there's a dr. Eggman segue in there somewhere)

Could there be, besides SEGA doesn't care about the brand another reason why it's done halfheartedly?

[Rabbitearsblog]

45 minutes ago, Duelistic Nature said:

This may sound incredibly naive of me, but what if it's less SEGA not caring, but Sonic Team not knowing how to scope how big the project will be? SEGA for all intents and purposes is a publisher, they couldn't care less about the workload that comes with a new project as long as it doesn't cost them more money than they have the scope in investing for it.

Sonic Team is tasked to make a project, but don't they have a say if the project is feasible in the allotted time frame?

I am aware it's the dilemma that an artist/designer group has about making a deadline and getting as much quality/product into a project to make the shareholders happy. Doesn't Sonic team as artists/ designers group have a say if the project is beyond the scope SEGA has in mind?

Is the situation that bad that SEGA, the IP holder of the Sonic brand, has a zero-tolerance policy for their design teams not agreeing with their master plans? (there's a dr. Eggman segue in there somewhere)

Could there be, besides SEGA doesn't care about the brand another reason why it's done halfheartedly?

I've been thinking about this.  Just how much control does SEGA actually have over the quality of the games?  Do they just publish the games and are not involved with the process of making the games or do they give out mandates for Sonic Team to follow?

[Sega DogTagz]

1 hour ago, Rabbitearsblog said:

I've been thinking about this.  Just how much control does SEGA actually have over the quality of the games?  Do they just publish the games and are not involved with the process of making the games or do they give out mandates for Sonic Team to follow?

Answering a question like that changes from project to project and depends on a lot of factors and information we aren't privy too.

 

For example, Rise of Lyric was DOA the second SEGA told BRB that the game needed to be on the WiiU. That's a corporate decision that doomed any chance that game had towards quality. The working prototype wasn't built to run on the WiiU and the engine wasn't compatible. But they did what they were told to do, and in the end we ended up with a trainwreck. Go figure. In the other direction, Free Riders was a mess, but that game was built from the jump for the kinect. That's probably more of a failure on the the dev team(s). They just didn't get the job done.

 

[Rabbitearsblog]

24 minutes ago, Sega DogTagz said:

Answering a question like that changes from project to project and depends on a lot of factors and information we aren't privy too.

For example, Rise of Lyric was DOA the second SEGA told BRB that the game needed to be on the WiiU. That's a corporate decision that doomed any chance that game had towards quality. The working prototype wasn't built to run on the WiiU and the engine wasn't compatible. But they did what they were told to do, and in the end we ended up with a trainwreck. Go figure. In the other direction, Free Riders was a mess, but that game was built from the jump for the kinect. That's probably more of a failure on the the dev team(s). They just didn't get the job done.

That's interesting. I've been hearing a lot of controversy on how SEGA handled Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric and it just frustrates me that they didn't bother to sit down with the dev team to talk about whether or not the game is compatible with the WiiU in the first place.

[Sega DogTagz]

15 minutes ago, Rabbitearsblog said:

That's interesting. I've been hearing a lot of controversy on how SEGA handled Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric and it just frustrates me that they didn't bother to sit down with the dev team to talk about whether or not the game is compatible with the WiiU in the first place.

 

BRB was a new-ish developer who were trying to get their foot in the door of a major IP. If Sega asked them straight up, could you get this game working on the WiiU, no CEO on the planet would say "No".

Its just a collective failure on all fronts. Someone at Sega needs to be technically proficient enough to realize that was going to be a monumental ask. Especially when your outsourcing. BRB was always going to put their best foot forward and give you that gung-ho attitude to seal the sales pitch - but if your asking them to move the sun and realign the planets while their at it; then that's on you.

 

Decision making on the corporate level is delicate and there are often a lot of moving parts. Its not usually this easy to pin blame on a singular bad decision.

[Rabbitearsblog]

21 minutes ago, Sega DogTagz said:

BRB was a new-ish developer who were trying to get their foot in the door of a major IP. If Sega asked them straight up, could you get this game working on the WiiU, no CEO on the planet would say "No".

Its just a collective failure on all fronts. Someone at Sega needs to be technically proficient enough to realize that was going to be a monumental ask. Especially when your outsourcing. BRB was always going to put their best foot forward and give you that gung-ho attitude to seal the sales pitch - but if your asking them to move the sun and realign the planets while their at it; then that's on you.

Decision making on the corporate level is delicate and there are often a lot of moving parts. Its not usually this easy to pin blame on a singular bad decision.

Oh, I didn' know that Big Red Button was new at the time.  Are they still working on any games?

[Sega DogTagz]

55 minutes ago, Rabbitearsblog said:

Oh, I didn' know that Big Red Button was new at the time.  Are they still working on any games?

new-ish. I think they popped up in 2009? They do have some industry vets on staff tho.

 

Boom kinda tanked their rep. They've dabbled in some VR games but I don't think they have put anything out in the last 5 years.

[McGroose]

Sega has to justify selling the game at a way higher price than it needs to be, so they have to add in a bunch of useless shit nobody asked for that makes the game hardly any more repayable at best and downright buttass ugly at worst. Colors should've been rereleased at $20 and should've just been a FPS and resolution change. As for Origins... ya, idk which is worse, that or Colors Ultimate. I'm not spending $40 on something like Origins. 

[PaddyFancy]

5 hours ago, Rabbitearsblog said:

Oh, I didn' know that Big Red Button was new at the time.  Are they still working on any games?

I know this is a topic about Sonic Team but just wanted to talk about Big Red Button (or my early experience of Sonic Boom's reveal) for a quick minute. Some industry vets that @Sega DogTagzmentioned were former Naughty Dog employees. You know the peeps who before the likes of The Last of Us and Unchartered were known to have made the original Crash Bandicoot games. You also got the other Boom game on 3DS developed by Sanzaru Games who were fairly well established for having ported the original Sly Cooper trilogy to PS3 and developed the brand new fourth entry.

If you take those ingredients you may think these people (BRB in particular) could make something that'll be the future of Sonic. Something that's more Ratchet & Clank-esque which I found appealing because Ratchet was my favourite mascot that wasn't Mario. The idea that BRB could actually make a better 3D Sonic game than Sonic Team after the lackluster reception of Sonic Lost World wasn't entirely unthought of.

Not everyone was as optimistic thought as I'm sure others would elucidate.

I have to stop here because I ran out of time to write a post.

[Sonikko]

On 7/26/2022 at 4:06 PM, Sega DogTagz said:

They he did, but as you may recall much prior to all that Sega went absolute radio silence on Origins for more than half a year and there were numerous rumblings that something was broken about the game internally. 

The game was announced when they didn't even have a working build to show, that's what happened. It hasn't been delayed internally, it was always slated for release for early 2022, which is when it came out. It was just greenlit with an unrealistic release date from the beginning.

 

On 7/26/2022 at 4:06 PM, Sega DogTagz said:

Covid didn't help the situation - but during a shareholder meeting a Sega rep specifically said that Frontiers was being delayed to "brush up the quality". Colors also shared many of the same internal rumblings we saw in Origins.

 

I don't think you should read too much into what they say, cause this has been what they told their shareholders for years, and also their usual PR speech, ironically enough something they said right before releasing Colours Ultimate.

They've been playing the same song and dance since 06.

 

On 7/26/2022 at 4:06 PM, Sega DogTagz said:

No one said it was impossible, just that it created added difficulty. I mean, you don't have to look much farther than Big Red Button to get a prime example of what happens when you try to cram a square peg into a round hole. Trying to port between two systems (in that case PC and WiiU) the system architecture just isn't always compatible. Dev time gets eaten up just trying to get the thing to run properly - and they couldn't even do that to be honest.

 

And also yeah it's not as easy as "export as modern game" and done, but also you're comparing apples to oranges.

Boom had to be downported to Wii U which did not support the Cryengine it was built on, Colours is an old game that has to run on much more powerful hardware, even the Switch is at least 3x more powerful than a Wii. 

Even by just porting it barebones on current hardware, it should just work. It was just a matter of ineptitude on their side.

Banana Splitz HD, Skyward Sword HD, De Blob 1 and 2, Mario Galaxy, Xenoblade Chronicles, Okami HD, those are all Wii games that got ported to Switch and run just *fine* at the very least, if not great in the case of others.

 

 

 

[Wittymations]

On 7/26/2022 at 1:35 AM, Vampfox said:

Most companies don't struggle with rereleasing their games. Nintendo sure doesn't.

Nintendo isn't the best example. They're in a very unique position of owning the console they want to rerelease to.  The Nintendo ecosystem is very much like Apple in that sense.

They also have a business model of using older technology to its fullest potential rather than the Sony/Microsoft newer, beefier style.

As for whether or not most companies struggle with remasters? I can't really answer that, I don't have a list of every remaster and the public perception of each title on hand. But I didn't say most struggle, either, I said that a lot of companies have these same challenges to overcome. Perhaps most do, I don't know but those challenges exist, regardless.

 

 

  

On 7/25/2022 at 11:12 PM, Rabbitearsblog said:

I agree that budget constraints and time constraints are huge factors in these remasters not doing so well, in terms of quality.  I never understood why SEGA didn't just give Sonic Team or anyone else working with them more time to improve these remasters instead of rushing them out like that.  They could earn more money from these remasters if they were in better conditions.

Time is money. Money is time.

The time spent on a project is less time for other projects and less money being given to the company. Besides, the reality is "a good quality remaster" probably wouldn't honestly move the needle much in sales compared to a mediocre or even poor one, as ignorant as that may sound.

The reality is, a lot of times quality and sale numbers just do not align. So, why spend more time on something that's gonna have "meh" sales? You'd have to convince the big wigs of that argument and that's hard to do. Can you convince them it's worth the time and money? What if your prediction is off by a huge margin? Could be your neck on the line.