I've managed to Pin point the exact Date of when Sonic's career went downhill!
This was all in the matter of when the Sega Dreamcast went bankrupt!
When Sega went down, they dragged Sonic Team down with them!
Sonic Adventure 2 was set to be Sonic's greatest video game ever made, they spent So long working on it to perfection, making so many deals with record companies and soap shoes and stuff, working hard to make this the greatest ever Sonic game!
They thought their efforts would be greatly paid off, but unfortunatly they couldn't have released the game at a worse time!
Because it was at that VERY TIME that the Sega Dreamcast was dying out! That means even though they worked so hard on the game, it could only appeal to a certain number of audiences, die hard Sega fans! No one else would be willing to play in it, or invest in a clearly dying console, this really put Sonic Team back because they could have really made a lot of money out of the game, if only more people would have been more interested in it!
Its simply a matter of good gaming, bad timing because if they hadn't bothered to make Sonic Shuffle and went straight to work on Sonic Adventure 2 after the previous one was finished, they might have had more of a chance to appeal to a bigger audience, despite how wrong it is to rush a games development!
Same deal with Conkers bad fur day really, the best game on the n64, took so long to make the n64 died out before it was released!
But back to my point, Because of this loss of finance, Sonic Team has been struggling to meet ends meet every game afterwards, even re-releasing the game for the Nintendo Gamecube wasn't enough because when Sega moved to Nintendo, again it was a bad market as Nintendo fans didn't want Sonic on their territory, and Sonic fans wern't willing to purchase the same game twice, just to support Sonic Team!
This is the very reason every Sonic game after Sonic Adventure 2 has become minorly successful and also the very reason as to the loss of the popular voice cast to the very unpopular 4kids talent agency!
But I've explained this many times before in the past that the reason for the voice over change was because of budget cuts! Sonic Team had some of the most highly recognised and talented actors in the VO business, they wouldn't replace them merely to appeal to a small majority of Sonic X fans, that fan base doesn't overwhelm the profits made from the games and never did!
Anyway putting that aside, this is the reason to all of Sonic Teams past failures and the reason Sonic is now selling himself out to be whored freely by Nintendo!
Sega's failure dragged Sonic Team with them, despite the fact they are both separate departments!
megaman12345
I honestly think sonic has A chance to make A comeback. almost none of his GBA and D.S games were bad most of them were good. and most of his 3-d games wernt to bad. some were good. like sonic adventure 1 and 2. and sonic heros...well it was ok anyways. games like shadow the hedgehog and sonic riders < even if they wernt to bad of games> really dragged sonic down. but if sonic starts going into gameswith mario <like the olimpic game> he may become cool aand fun again. till then we can only hope. also jason griffen scuks at voiceing sonic. I WANT RYAN DRUMMIN BACK!
AshtonNextGen
I Know but your missing the point entirely!
Its not just about the few numbers of Sonic fans who love Sonic's games, I do too!
Its about the Bigger audience who don't love the games that are the problem, because Sonic's failing to reach the wider audience, the company is failing to make ends meet and pretty soon won't have any money left to throw!
The gaming world is a dominating bussiness, if your games can't appeal to as many gamers as possible, you lose out on profit, then you have huge depts to pay off and that really creates a struggle for the next game you try to release as the financial loss limits you to compete with other companies, meaning you will only continute to lose out untill you can't afford to keep the company going any longer!
Its the Cycle of Life, Dude! Money isn't infinate!