13 Oct, 2010
SEGA fans have been crying for years about how Sonic has been beaten into the ground with not just too many Sonic games, but bad Sonic games. It’s not just us Sonic fans saying it now, SEGA are admitting it now according to Jurgen Post, SVP of Sega Europe. There’s a new internal policy to strive for quality in Sonic games, but not just that, they’re delisting the crap ones.
“We could make a lot of money on back-catalogue Sonic titles, but let’s keep the number of Sonic games available under control. Otherwise you can have cannibalisation. If there are ten Sonic games on the shelves, with people seeing Sonic Rush DS or Sonic Rush Adventure, this may not help our overall strategy.”
The point of the exercise is to increase the value of the brand, which has arguably been diluted to the point of impotence over recent years. Sega’s US vice president of sales and marketing, Alan Pritchard, said:
“If you look at all of the Sonic releases over the last four or five years, there’s a real mixed bag out there. A Sonic game can sell if it’s a 60-percent Metacritic game, that’s not an issue. But is that really what the consumer wants? Is that what we should be doing as a publisher and a developer? We should be bringing much higher quality products to market to deliver a better experience for the consumer.”
So, will Sonic come off the life support machine and be considered a worthwhile brand again? Well Sonic Rush was cool and Sonic Colours looks like a great step in the right direction. Sonic 4 released this week to great critical acclaim too. Here’s hope the blue hedgehog can get cool again.
Source: MVC
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