Sonic Frontiers biggest non game design flaws, and are they due to incompetence?

[Rabbitearsblog]

I don't think incompetence has anything to do with the game feeling unpolished, but rather that SEGA has a nasty habit of rushing the Sonic games out the door before they actually finished them.  Like, SEGA has been rushing out Sonic games since the very beginning with Sonic the Hedgehog 2 being an example of them rushing out the game.  That was also a major issue with the Sonic games in the past decade as SEGA kept rushing out the games before the devs had any time to polish them.  And even with Frontiers, the devs still didn't have that much time to polish everything in the game.  I think that if SEGA had given the developers more time to polish the game, than yeah, the critics would have given this game a better score.  Also, I'm not sure if Sonic Frontiers is a AAA game, because SEGA is a third party gaming company; of course I'm not saying that just because SEGA is a third party video game company, it means that they don't put out any AAA games. They probably do, they are just not coming to me at the moment. But I'm assuming that Sonic Team doesn't have the kind of resources that other developer teams in say, Nintendo would have to make the games more polished.

[GX -The Spindash-]

Probably not saying anything people aren't already aware of, but might as well make sure we're on the same page.

At the end of the day, SEGA is the one who decides they will sell a game at a certain price at a certain time and at a certain threshold of quality. If a game is not good enough, then it is up to SEGA to make the business decision of discounting, delaying, shelving, or reassigning a project.

We can be sensitive to the business realities of trading reputation for opportunity cost, but regardless of Sonic Team's successes or failures as a developer, they are not the ones asking you for money. Their relationship is with SEGA. Atlus' relationship is with SEGA. RGG Studio's relationship is with SEGA. It's up to SEGA to manage those relationships effectively, and turn those relationships into products they can sell. The same SEGA who touts the magical profit-spewing "Super Game" in every investor briefing. The same SEGA that locked themselves into a relationship with an NFT game developer shortly before that marketplace crashed and burned. The same SEGA who apparently didn't keep a close enough eye on Paramount while they produced Sonic the Rat Boy for theaters. The same SEGA that allowed Sonic 06 and Rise of Lyric and Aliens: Colonial Marines to bear their name and ship at an industry standard price.

Have analytically critical feelings about Sonic Team, develop opinions about their capabilities as a developer, 100%, absolutely. But when we talk about AAA development with AAA game prices or whatever, that is SEGA saying "we are willing to risk what you think about us as a publisher in exchange for your $60+"

[Sega DogTagz]

6 minutes ago, GX -The Spindash- said:

 The same SEGA who apparently didn't keep a close enough eye on Paramount while they produced Sonic the Rat Boy for theaters.

 

just a tiny nitpick.

 

Sega totally objected to that first draft of Movie Sonic. They just didn't have enough clout to do anything about it. Their objections were noted and ignored. Paramount was running that show, and they were happy to move forward with Ugly Sonic until the internet said NO.

[GX -The Spindash-]

5 minutes ago, Sega DogTagz said:

Sega totally objected to that first draft of Movie Sonic. They just didn't have enough clout to do anything about it. Their objections were noted and ignored. Paramount was running that show, and they were happy to move forward with Ugly Sonic until the internet said NO.

I agree, but that's generally why if you care about your franchises, you frame your licensing agreements to give your objections weight. Whatever I think about Super Nintendo Land or the Mario Movie, I know that Nintendo shipped Miyamoto over to oversee everything. Not every agreement needs to be that intense, but you've got to do something to protect your interests.

But yeah, that nitpick of my phrasing is absolutely valid.

[FlameStream]

I've stated this a few times around here, and it bears to be repeated: You never get the luxury of "more time".

As a developer, you typically promise a date and budget and you are granted that time and money. You're then responsible to get it delivered on time with the agreed budget. After all, granting more time means more money to be spent on something that is technically overdue. Just because it's a Sonic game, it doesn't mean that you get special privileges. In fact, I'd be ready to say that Sonic may not be the series that Sega holds dearest; it would be less willing to give a pass than some other series like RGG.

[Sega DogTagz]

5 minutes ago, FlameStream said:

 Just because it's a Sonic game, it doesn't mean that you get special privileges. In fact, I'd be ready to say that Sonic may not be the series that Sega holds dearest; it would be less willing to give a pass than some other series like RGG.

 

I'd say it has more to do with Sonic being a proven brand that can reliably push a million or so units regardless of game quality. Be it Mania, or 06, You can usually bank on a main series game meeting that quota. If you can do that, its easier to say no to an extension and send something half-baked out the door. If Yakuza sends a 06 to the marketplace, that might mean the end of that franchise.

 

Sonic's in a similar boat that Pokemon finds itself in. Those games are often rifled out the door without a hint of quality control or pride not because the parent company has more favor with other brands, but because game quality at the end of the day impacts little in the way of overall sales. Pokemon games can be written in for record earnings regardless if the game is done or not, so there is little business sense to actually giving those games time to develop. Scarlett and Violet could have used a ton more time to polish itself up - but whats the point of that if you can ship it as is, sell 10 million in 3 days and get to work on the next one?

 

Spoiler

Honestly I'm super hard on GameFreak because I feel like Sega / Sonic Team takes cues from them. They push a lot of units on IP strength over game quality

 

Here's hoping that Frontiers changes that narrative for Sonic moving forward. That delivering a quality product that people are hungry for can yeild better return on investments than just dumping garbage onto the lawn and letting the strength of the IP long-leg its sales to respectable levels.

[Forgeafrontier]

5 hours ago, Sega DogTagz said:

Well for starters, its absolutely not priced like a AAA game.  GOW and other games like it launch at 69, not 59, so even by your own metrics that conclusion is bunk. Via a heads up comparison, Frontiers is still a budget title next to other obvious AAA games like say Zelda.

Secondly, just because its full priced (which it isn't) doesn't make it a AAA game. Starting price was never a metric to determining where a game ranks on the scale of A to AAA.  I can pull up GameStops website and throw a dart in its general direction and find a a 59.99 game that no one would ever describe as AAA.

Truck Driver Premium?

Atlus Fallen?

Atlelier Ryza 3?

Those are the kind of games launching in Frontiers ballpark. Not Zelda. Not GOW. Not any self respecting AAA.

 I agree that it is absolutely a healthy to compare Frontiers to the big fish it wants to hang out with, but one look at Fronters credit reel vs a game like Horizon Zero Dawn and you should have a somber dose of reality in terms of how much manpower it takes to build those high end games. Frontiers is going to fall short of that every time. Its an unfair benchmark that we thrust onto it because we want to still treat Sonic like a first party mega IP when he is not.

AAA status is reserved only for the games with blockbuster ambitions and blockbuster budgets to back it up. It shouldn't be thrown around casually, no matter how much we want it to be the case.

Atlus has a track record of squeezing out maximum efficiency and reuses more assets than even Sonic does. Wouldn't surprise me if the budget stayed low.

That being said, nobody dared rush that game and it got all the time and space it needed to be everything it wanted to be. Very few dev's are given that kind of leash.

2 things I want to address here, 60 dollars is very much a common price amongst AAA games, while it is true the industry is starting to put games at a higher price tag, 60 dollars still is far from uncommon for AAA games, especially if they are on both current and last gen consoles. This does not excuse any of the issues this game has in the slightest, (aside from maybe the game falling flat towards the end and it not actually having 5 islands but even that is likely just due to poor use of resources)

All those games you mentioned as being more comparable to frontiers are still leaps and bounds ahead of it in every single way, atelier ryza 3 is more polished than frontiers in every single way. Frontiers is well below average even for double A games with smaller budgets like say crash 4. Even batman arkham knight which came out in 2015 is a far more advanced game than frontiers in every department. Frontiers literally was given an extra year of development and the game still lacks basic coding and animation polish. What makes this even worse is that other areas of the game like the voice acting and especially music is fairly high quality and is on par from would expect from tripple A games. The music especially is absolutely incredible and imo surpasses most game OST's I  have played in the last 2 years. But I don't think its out of reach to say ohtani is just far more talented than 90 % of the staff working at sonic team. 

These issues could be due to plain incompetence or just horrible mismanagement and communication from the start, I could imagine if the team can't even get an idea for what the game should be for the first few years of its development it would make work for contracted teams like the artists and animators much much harder because they likely either don't know what they are animating, or have to change their animation work with every new iteration of the game, or they don't even get contacted up until less then a year before the game comes out. The game informer article on frontiers mentioned that when he played the game last may there were cutscenes that were literally just storyboard animatics and nothing more. So I think gross mismanagement was also an issue, either way its inexcusable

This video points out pretty much every polish issue frontiers has, his demeanor is very aggressive and a bit off putting and I don't watch his content much but he does bring up great points here.

o

2 hours ago, Rabbitearsblog said:

I don't think incompetence has anything to do with the game feeling unpolished, but rather that SEGA has a nasty habit of rushing the Sonic games out the door before they actually finished them.  Like, SEGA has been rushing out Sonic games since the very beginning with Sonic the Hedgehog 2 being an example of them rushing out the game.  That was also a major issue with the Sonic games in the past decade as SEGA kept rushing out the games before the devs had any time to polish them.  And even with Frontiers, the devs still didn't have that much time to polish everything in the game.  I think that if SEGA had given the developers more time to polish the game, than yeah, the critics would have given this game a better score.  Also, I'm not sure if Sonic Frontiers is a AAA game, because SEGA is a third party gaming company; of course I'm not saying that just because SEGA is a third party video game company, it means that they don't put out any AAA games. They probably do, they are just not coming to me at the moment. But I'm assuming that Sonic Team doesn't have the kind of resources that other developer teams in say, Nintendo would have to make the games more polished.

I think some of the issues this game has are design oriented  like its art direction (its pretty ugly to look at imo, the game looks so drab and boring and only looks good at certain times of day) and the rules of momentum not being consistent. I also think just saying "the devs didn't have enough time" is simplifying bigger problems here, I think if you want to boil down to it, you could say the devs were short on time but what causes them to be short on time. Games coming out as unpolished as frontiers are rare, even in the indie department, is it really unfair to say sonic team just didn't use their time or resources wisely?

[GX -The Spindash-]

1 hour ago, Forgeafrontier said:

Games coming out as unpolished as frontiers are rare, even in the indie department

Not these days they aren't. In fact, it feels like they're becoming more and more common as games get bigger and bigger. Halo Infinite struggled to maintain the Games As Service multiplayer plans they had, Gotham Knights is a significant step down from prior games in the series, Pokemon Scarlet/Violet... probably shouldn't have been the SECOND open world game Game Freak put out in a single year as a small studio. Callisto Protocol launched as an absolute mess on every platform but the PS5. Cyberpunk got pulled from marketplaces. Saints Row was kind of a mess all around. Final Fantasy 14 had to be completely rebuilt from the ground up to such an extent that they now treat the old version of the game as lore. And Square Enix is usually good for one absolute nightmare failure a year, from the Quiet Man to Balan's Wonderworld to Babylon's Fall. And we still deal with shader compilation stutter in a number of PC games.

In some respects, I'm absolutely with you. Sonic Frontiers is the fourth best open world game I've played this year out of four. It doesn't have diverse tasks or deep progression or engaging world design. But it's unfortunately not an aberration in the larger marketplace or within the series itself. It's a game that takes some big swings in some areas and cowers within the deeply familiar in others. Making an attention-grabbing game in the industry as it is right now is brutally difficult, and open world design itself is hard, and expensive, and demanding, and getting right on the first try is a monumental feat that requires an incredible combination of planning, talent, skill, effort, and occasionally luck.

This is not an excuse for SEGA being okay with selling the game as it is, but it is emphasis that right now, everyone is trying to figure out how to survive and thrive in a crowded pond. The unfortunate reality we're dealing with is, if you don't know what your return is going to be, then you've got to hedge your bets and either find some corners to cut or alternate income streams.

 

As for the cost aspect, games aren't inherently priced based on whether the budget is AAA or AA or however you want to organize tiers of millions of dollars. They're based on what people will be willing to pay, and how to balance price and demand. To be honest... SEGA was probably right to charge $60. Some may not agree that it's worth $60, but as the math has played out, a LOT of people do believe it's either worth $60 or one of the many discounts the game has had since launch. The Etrian Odyssey is a purposefully minimalist set of dungeon crawling RPG ports from the DS, and SEGA/Atlus is charging $40 each, or $80 for all three. Not because those games are necessarily worth it, but because they believe their audience will pay it (or still be there when it goes on sale).

[Rabbitearsblog]

1 hour ago, Forgeafrontier said:

2 things I want to address here, 60 dollars is very much a common price amongst AAA games, while it is true the industry is starting to put games at a higher price tag, 60 dollars still is far from uncommon for AAA games, especially if they are on both current and last gen consoles. This does not excuse any of the issues this game has in the slightest, (aside from maybe the game falling flat towards the end and it not actually having 5 islands but even that is likely just due to poor use of resources)

All those games you mentioned as being more comparable to frontiers are still leaps and bounds ahead of it in every single way, atelier ryza 3 is more polished than frontiers in every single way. Frontiers is well below average even for double A games with smaller budgets like say crash 4. Even batman arkham knight which came out in 2015 is a far more advanced game than frontiers in every department. Frontiers literally was given an extra year of development and the game still lacks basic coding and animation polish. What makes this even worse is that other areas of the game like the voice acting and especially music is fairly high quality and is on par from would expect from tripple A games. The music especially is absolutely incredible and imo surpasses most game OST's I  have played in the last 2 years. But I don't think its out of reach to say ohtani is just far more talented than 90 % of the staff working at sonic team. 

These issues could be due to plain incompetence or just horrible mismanagement and communication from the start, I could imagine if the team can't even get an idea for what the game should be for the first few years of its development it would make work for contracted teams like the artists and animators much much harder because they likely either don't know what they are animating, or have to change their animation work with every new iteration of the game, or they don't even get contacted up until less then a year before the game comes out. The game informer article on frontiers mentioned that when he played the game last may there were cutscenes that were literally just storyboard animatics and nothing more. So I think gross mismanagement was also an issue, either way its inexcusable

This video points out pretty much every polish issue frontiers has, his demeanor is very aggressive and a bit off putting and I don't watch his content much but he does bring up great points here.

o

I think some of the issues this game has are design oriented  like its art direction (its pretty ugly to look at imo, the game looks so drab and boring and only looks good at certain times of day) and the rules of momentum not being consistent. I also think just saying "the devs didn't have enough time" is simplifying bigger problems here, I think if you want to boil down to it, you could say the devs were short on time but what causes them to be short on time. Games coming out as unpolished as frontiers are rare, even in the indie department, is it really unfair to say sonic team just didn't use their time or resources wisely?

Well, there was COVID and that probably caused them to delay the game.  What kind of problems COVID caused for Sonic Team, I'm not quite sure.

[jungle_penguins]

AAA is really unsustainable more than ever like a lot of things. Technology being better doesn't really amount to much. Sonic Team lucked out (by luck I mean things sold well) by churning out games in the 2000s, and they can't really do that now. What took 30 people to make the core of Sonic Adventure 2 back then isn't enough for anything now. The only unique thing about Sonic Team is that they (the name) are still around.

[Kuzu]

12 hours ago, Sega DogTagz said:

I'd say it has more to do with Sonic being a proven brand that can reliably push a million or so units regardless of game quality. Be it Mania, or 06, You can usually bank on a main series game meeting that quota. If you can do that, its easier to say no to an extension and send something half-baked out the door. If Yakuza sends a 06 to the marketplace, that might mean the end of that franchise.

Sonic's in a similar boat that Pokemon finds itself in. Those games are often rifled out the door without a hint of quality control or pride not because the parent company has more favor with other brands, but because game quality at the end of the day impacts little in the way of overall sales. Pokemon games can be written in for record earnings regardless if the game is done or not, so there is little business sense to actually giving those games time to develop. Scarlett and Violet could have used a ton more time to polish itself up - but whats the point of that if you can ship it as is, sell 10 million in 3 days and get to work on the next one?

  Reveal hidden contents

Honestly I'm super hard on GameFreak because I feel like Sega / Sonic Team takes cues from them. They push a lot of units on IP strength over game quality

Here's hoping that Frontiers changes that narrative for Sonic moving forward. That delivering a quality product that people are hungry for can yeild better return on investments than just dumping garbage onto the lawn and letting the strength of the IP long-leg its sales to respectable levels.

TCPI may similarly rush out games like Sega does, but the main difference is that the Pokemon brand is far more profitable and successful than the Sonic brand.

Scarlet and Violet came out ten days after Frontiers, yet has sold more than six times as much in a similar time span.

 

So even a company in a similar predicament as Sonic, can still manage to do better. At some point you have to wonder if time and budget are the issues.

[Sega DogTagz]

20 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

So even a company in a similar predicament as Sonic, can still manage to do better. At some point you have to wonder if time and budget are the issues.

 

I wouldn't consider them "doing better" from a development standpoint.  Their games suffer from more or less the same technical deficiencies and lack of quality control that Sonic games do. In fact, Its not a stretch to say Scarlet and Violet are probably even more rough around the edges than Frontiers.  The high sales are nice, but all it does in encourage more of the same a year and a half from now.

 

They are pushing units on a fanbase that complains but buys the stuff anyway. Just because it printed money doesn't allow me to ignore how poorly and rushed the game was put together.

 

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

59 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

TCPI may similarly rush out games like Sega does, but the main difference is that the Pokemon brand is far more profitable and successful than the Sonic brand.

Scarlet and Violet came out ten days after Frontiers, yet has sold more than six times as much in a similar time span.

So even a company in a similar predicament as Sonic, can still manage to do better. At some point you have to wonder if time and budget are the issues.

This is the negligent of how big a franchise Pokemon is. Among the biggest franchises out there.

It's kind of a given it was going to outsell a lot of other franchises, regardless of quality. 

[ZinogreVolt]

Regardless of any notion of what constitutes a "proper" AAA game, I think Sega has already come to understand that more time and resources are going to be necessary if Sonic Team is to make more polished and varied games that are also big in scope. Of course, it's up to Sonic Team to prove them right and make something far better than what Frontiers was. Whether they can is up for debate, but provisions need to make the overall scope they're going for, which it's probably fair to say Frontiers lacked.

On the topic of Pokemon, honestly I think it's much worse off. Pokemon Legends was surprisingly good, but Pokemon Scarlet/Violet and the Diamond/Pearl remake smacked of being very blatant rush jobs in both polish and game design. Frontiers has its own issues regarding a lack of polish where it matters, but Scarlet/Violet got turned into the gaming community's chew toy for how bad it was. That's partly due to the sheer popularity of Pokemon relative to Sonic, but I've not such a technically embarrassing game from such a popular series in a very long time.

[Slashy]

23 hours ago, GX -The Spindash- said:

Frontiers is definitely, definitely a bummer for me. When I play an open world game (and regardless of what Kishimoto calls it, Frontiers has aspirations of being an open world game), I expect there to feel like there are a hundred interesting ideas and mechanics and nuances. I'd say Frontiers has maybe a dozen stretched across 30 hours.

I'm prefacing with that to kind of push back, I don't see this as incompetence. I have the nagging suspicion that this was a troubled development cycle and the consequences of ambition.

PURE SPECULATION ZONE AHEAD.

---

While Kishimoto has been out there saying that this is defining the next major stage of the series and that it's going to bolster Sonic Team's reputation, I get the impression that the reality is a bit more complex. The actual level elements of the islands aren't built into the world. Rather, they're constructed from aesthetically standardized level components across all five islands and often sort of floating in the sky. The fourth island appears to take place on an otherwise unreachable portion of the first island, and the fifth island is built with much of the same aesthetics as the first island. The impression I get from that is that something severed world design from level design, and that the island assets (especially the the ones past Kronos) existed before they actually began designing the game as a legitimate platformer.

Open world games take time. If you... say, lead a significantly smaller staff than the average Ubisoft project AND have to significantly redesign part-way through, everything else would suffer to make sure you actually release a product that works on every platform from 2013 onward. Things like Cyberspace level motifs, overall island design, progression mechanics, and even basic stuff like UX (hope you like getting exactly one upgrade at a time).

Then we get to the aftermath, Kishimoto responding surprisingly openly to public feedback, including his initial interests in Sonic Frontiers not having the boost mechanic. While I might be reading too much into it, that doesn't inherently feel like the behavior of someone who is completely satisfied with a final product, or has a clear vision for the future of the franchise. I don't say that to besmirch him, there could be a number of hypothetical factors as to why (or I could be wildly off base in my initial assertion), but something just doesn't quite feel right about it, especially considering that he's been directing mainline games since 2010.

My overall impression from Sonic Frontiers is that it felt like a proof of concept that stretched itself a little too thin in trying to prioritize game length. It accomplished being 30 hours, longer than most other prior Sonic games, but the cost seems to be limited and reused assets, maps disconnected from level design, and very simple progression. We might never know what happened to make it the way it is, but for years it has felt like Sonic games have been resource constrained in such a way that polish, level design, and even the basic feel suffer. I really only see this game's issues as symptomatic of the same problem.

---

END OF SPECULATION ZONE.

In spite of all that, I'm at least a little optimistic. The degree to which Sonic Frontiers is a financial success would in ideal circumstances justify Sonic Team getting access to more resources while also pushing them to refine this (financially) successful formula. I could easily see this game's better ideas fleshed out and transplanted into more engaging world design. It's just that question of if they can capitalize on that and deliver.

---

In the interview with Famitsu it appears to be that the game was designed something like a giant hub world that would lead to various platforming challenges. You could still see remnants of this in the final game if you look at some of those time attack map missions.

 

But after players complain that the world map was completely boring and shallow there was some form of course correction and that is what we see here.

 

I think part of Frontiers problem is that it needed constant user feedback to not be another disappointment like Sonic Forces. There was even talk of a boss needing to be redesigned because it was overused which leads me to believe that the nega-wisp armor boss was going to show up yet again.

 

This might be the rare example of a modern-day game having drastic changes during its development and having playable builds made of all those versions.

I predict that when those builds surface someday we'll all be thanking the focus groups for a bullet that got dodged.

[Kuzu]

4 hours ago, Sega DogTagz said:

I wouldn't consider them "doing better" from a development standpoint.  Their games suffer from more or less the same technical deficiencies and lack of quality control that Sonic games do. In fact, Its not a stretch to say Scarlet and Violet are probably even more rough around the edges than Frontiers.  The high sales are nice, but all it does in encourage more of the same a year and a half from now.

They are pushing units on a fanbase that complains but buys the stuff anyway. Just because it printed money doesn't allow me to ignore how poorly and rushed the game was put together.

This is just reinforces my point. If Scarlet and Violet can outsell Frontiers so significantly despite technically being a worse game, then what the fuck does that say about Sonic as a franchise?

Sonic fans buy shitty games too out of brand loyalty, so you can't even use that point in its favor over Pokemon. 

3 hours ago, Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon said:

This is the negligent of how big a franchise Pokemon is. Among the biggest franchises out there.

It's kind of a given it was going to outsell a lot of other franchises, regardless of quality. 

Sonic is one of the few franchises that is older than Pokemon along with Mario, but only the latter still competes with Pokemon as a brand while Sonic has fallen completely behind both despite initially being comparable to Mario.

[ZinogreVolt]

6 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

This is just reinforces my point. If Scarlet and Violet can outsell Frontiers so significantly despite technically being a worse game, then what the fuck does that say about Sonic as a franchise?

Could you clarify what you mean by this? I'm not quite sure what you're saying.

[Razule]

1 minute ago, ZinogreVolt said:

Could you clarify what you mean by this? I'm not quite sure what you're saying.

Sonic's not popular enough with the general audience to sell well with brand power alone anymore.

[ZinogreVolt]

I dunno. I don't find that very convincing, especially since Frontiers isn't some miracle-work game that reviewed amazingly. Both before and after release it was still subject to a lot of scrutiny. There's very few games that look good sales-wise next to Pokemon. S/V in particular sold more than 20 million copies in the span of about 6 weeks, there aren't many--if any games that have beaten such an insane metric. It's also worth keeping in mind that the landscape of games has shifted dramatically since Sonic's heyday. Platformers are just not as popular as they used to be, with pretty much only Mario being the one to easily sell millions upon millions of copies. Kirby and the Forgotten Land recently got done selling 6mil, but that was after almost a year on the market, and even despite that Sonic is still selling faster than it. The only thing I'm really convinced of when hearing that Pokemon sold a shitton more than Frontiers is that Pokemon as a brand is far stronger which, yeah, no duh. 

[Kuzu]

1 hour ago, ZinogreVolt said:

I dunno. I don't find that very convincing, especially since Frontiers isn't some miracle-work game that reviewed amazingly. Both before and after release it was still subject to a lot of scrutiny. There's very few games that look good sales-wise next to Pokemon. S/V in particular sold more than 20 million copies in the span of about 6 weeks, there aren't many--if any games that have beaten such an insane metric. It's also worth keeping in mind that the landscape of games has shifted dramatically since Sonic's heyday. Platformers are just not as popular as they used to be, with pretty much only Mario being the one to easily sell millions upon millions of copies. Kirby and the Forgotten Land recently got done selling 6mil, but that was after almost a year on the market, and even despite that Sonic is still selling faster than it. The only thing I'm really convinced of when hearing that Pokemon sold a shitton more than Frontiers is that Pokemon as a brand is far stronger which, yeah, no duh. 

That's just it though, Sonic fans act like that's exactly what it is. Sonic Team themselves are acting like that with songs like One Way Dream. The question never shifts to the point that Sonic isn't selling anywhere near as well as his contemporaries. Even Zelda didn't really hit a similar level of success until Breath of the Wild came out, but has since surpassed Sonic's sales in totality. So the question becomes, how can Pokemon and Mario still sell over 20 Million copies easily, but Sonic struggled to do even 3M until recently? Everyone treats Sonic like it is a AAA franchise in the same category as the likes of Mario or Pokemon, but doesn't have anywhere near the amount of polish or quality is the point I'm making. 

I'm not saying that Sonic needs to be a AAA franchise and I'd probably prefer a budgeted yet more quality title, but the point stands. Sonic isn't performing to the lofty standards its often held to. Scarlet and Violet may be a shit game on the technical side, but there's still a solid foundation there for people to latch onto. The same cannot be said for Sonic. 

If a game like Frontiers is what they put out after half a decade of development time, and they still could barely finish it despite that and consider it some herculean effort that they even got it out, then you have to start wondering just how exactly are they managing their resources.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

19 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

That's just it though, Sonic fans act like that's exactly what it is. Sonic Team themselves are acting like that with songs like One Way Dream. The question never shifts to the point that Sonic isn't selling anywhere near as well as his contemporaries. Even Zelda didn't really hit a similar level of success until Breath of the Wild came out, but has since surpassed Sonic's sales in totality. So the question becomes, how can Pokemon and Mario still sell over 20 Million copies easily, but Sonic struggled to do even 3M until recently? Everyone treats Sonic like it is a AAA franchise in the same category as the likes of Mario or Pokemon, but doesn't have anywhere near the amount of polish or quality is the point I'm making. 

I'm not saying that Sonic needs to be a AAA franchise and I'd probably prefer a budgeted yet more quality title, but the point stands. Sonic isn't performing to the lofty standards its often held to. Scarlet and Violet may be a shit game on the technical side, but there's still a solid foundation there for people to latch onto. The same cannot be said for Sonic. 

If a game like Frontiers is what they put out after half a decade of development time, and they still could barely finish it despite that and consider it some herculean effort that they even got it out, then you have to start wondering just how exactly are they managing their resources.

You've got the wrong idea on that end. The fact remains that COVID did come up and drive a wedge into things, so it's not like we can mistakenly assume that a good chunk of that time was just wasted by incompetence.

It drove a  into many game's development, but Sonic Team also had the issue of Sega rushing them, despite having to get pushed back.

And yet, still the improvements have shown through for the series with Frontiers' release.

Like, it's not so much that Frontiers had to "struggle" to get to 3 million (and it's still growing) as you seem to think.

It's more so just that it's expanded the overall audience to the point where the game sold that well.

Sonic's been a long running franchise that has its consistent sales, and Frontiers has raised that bar. Each series is going to have its own merit of niche, so it doesn't make sense to act like Sonic Team still don't know what they're doing when the results of reception suggest otherwise. 

It doesn't matter if Sonic does Pokemon numbers to such ludicrous a degree, given it's also a different genre and has much different circumstances upon which its attributes sell.

In regards to what Frontoers has done, it's on the right track, and I don't believe the fans are in the wrong for the regard they hold the franchise either. 

[Kuzu]

Are we gonna pretend like other game developers weren't in the same condition and also had to deal with COVID? So why does Sonic get a free pass?

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

2 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

Are we gonna pretend like other game developers weren't in the same condition and also had to deal with COVID? So why does Sonic get a free pass?

He doesn't. You may have missed it, but in addition to COVID, Sonic Team had the factor of Sega baring down on them badly.

We can't pretend they exactly had it squeaky clean and undeterred in that regard.

[Kuzu]

And I reiterate, other developers have had to work in similar conditions and were still able to put out quality products. All of these just sound like excuses to not hold Sonic Team accountable. 

Like do you honestly think SEGA are the only publishers in gaming who put unreasonable deadlines and restrictions on developers...

And as I said, they had five years, the longest development cycle of any game to date and they still barely made the deadline? Like how many excuses are we gonna make for this company? 

[GX -The Spindash-]

3 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

Are we gonna pretend like other game developers weren't in the same condition and also had to deal with COVID? So why does Sonic get a free pass?

"Free Pass" is weird way to put it.

I mean, I don't know Sonic Team's work culture. Broadly, I know Japanese development studios had a much harder time in both culture an infrastructure moving to work-from-home. I can't recall precise examples of what was impacted, but it was at least the general sentiment at the time.

Let's also not blow out of proportion what is being argued here. It's not that anybody is saying "Sonic Frontiers isn't on par with its contemporaries but it should get special treatment for that." As with any game, we're simply speculating the potential potholes on the road of this game's development that might explain why it is the way it is.