Key Takeaways
Competitive positioning played a huge role in
defining Sonic in the console wars, but lost relevancy over time
“A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed
game is forever bad”
Gimmicks only can retain interest for so long
(What started it
all. Credit: Sonicstadium.org)
In 1991, the name Sonic the Hedgehog meant something. Sonic
was the one character that could stand up to Mario. The one character who ran
so fast it was unlike anything gaming had ever seen before. The one character
who proved that there was room for more than one console in mainstream society.
In 2016, the name Sonic the Hedgehog is a disappointment. Drowned by a disaster
of failed products, overexposure, and loss of attitude, Sonic isn’t the same
character he used to be, and yet, many individuals still purchase his games.
While his latest entry, 2014’s Sonic
Boom: Rise of Lyric, was the biggest commercial failure in the character’s
history and a critical disaster it still managed to sell 320,000 copies on a
poorly selling console, so there still is a market for the blue blur. The 2011
iteration Sonic Generations was a
massive hit, selling 4.1 million copies of the game worldwide, so favor has not
truly fallen off for a good game in the franchise. Yet, given a push to either
go mobile or produce unfinished games, Sega seems to have no interest in
managing the quality of what made the company a household name, and the only
question left to ask is will there ever be a true revival for the fastest thing
alive.
(Gaming’s
fiercest rivalry. Credit: crit-hit.net)
Back in 1991 Nintendo ruled the gaming world. After
singlehandedly reviving home gaming after the 1983 Atari crash in the late
80’s, Nintendo had become a juggernaut. Revolutionary quality control and a tough
stance on royalty payments made it nearly impossible to circumvent Nintendo’s
grasp, and frankly, most developers needed to be on Nintendo’s console to
generate a profit. However, with so much potential profit at stake, challengers
were destined to appear, and sure enough, some did, including Sega. Originally
founded in 1940 as Standard Games, Sega’s origins were in slot machines, photo
booths and arcade games. Following the 1983 crash, Sega shifted priorities
towards a home gaming console as well, and after a few consoles that did not
tract well Sega released the Sega Master System to directly compete with the
Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1985. Buoyed by a subjectively weaker
mascot in Alex Kidd, the Master System was a distant challenger against the
behemoth NES. In an effort to differentiate Sega released the Genesis in 1989,
which featured 16-bit graphics and enhanced sound to showcase its innovation
over Nintendo. Furthermore, with aggressive marketing campaigns including ads
saying “Genesis does what Nintendon’t” and “Welcome to Next Level”, Sega
assumed a competitive positioning approach to take the fight to Nintendo.
Regardless, the Sega Genesis failed to truly catch on in the early going of the
console, and it was not until Sonic the
Hedgehog burst onto the scene that Sega became a mainstay in the industry.
In preparation for the arrival of the mascot, former CEO Tom
Kalinske and Marketing Director Al Nilsen came up with an idea to put Sega’s
console and new mascot to the test. The duo, along with the top notch Sega
marketing team, created a marketing plan to put the Genesis and the newly
released Super Nintendo side by side in malls across North America
demonstrating both system’s marquee games: Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog and Nintendo’s launch title Super Mario World. Undoubtedly a bold move, it paid off as
consumers were able to marvel at the speed of Sonic against a familiar Mario
game that may have been considered underwhelming in comparison (Harris)[1].
Speaking with Kalinske recently, he had the following to say about the emerging
marketing strategies for Sonic:
I was pretty ferocious about going after Nintendo.
It’s kind of nice when you have this one enemy to go after and form a strategy
around. It’s singular in nature. We’re going to do everything we can to harm our
competition and we’re going to do the best things we know how to do ourselves
to make sure we make a great product, but it’s sort of fun to be on the attack
mode all the time. Whether that’s in advertising or in PR events or you know
the brilliance of [Al Nilsen] doing a
shopping mall tour where we introduced the Super NES before they introduced it,
where we had teens come in and play Super NES and also play Genesis and the say
“OK, which one do you like better?” We won those about 80 percent of the time.
(Interview with Tom Kalinske, 4/26)
(Sonic on a Nintendo console – good business move, but still
gives me chills. Credit: Deviantart.com)
Furthermore, Sonic had attitude, in the way the character’s
eyes darted forward, wagged his finger on the title screen, and mischievously
smirked throughout the game. As Kalinske stated, “When we smoothed him out we made
him a friendlier character that everyone could identify with, but you also
might have noticed, he was kind of a smart ass. Part of this was the original
plan was that he was the smart ass kid next door who you really liked but he
got away with a lot of stuff but he was still fundamentally a good
guy.”(Interview, 4/26) Meanwhile, Mario
was a pleasantly plump plumber hoping to rescue the princess yet again. Sega’s
North America team drew a line in the sand and put users to the test. Consumers
responded wholeheartedly in their favor, and a war began. Also helping launch
Sonic in the war was his television programs, again due in large part thanks to
Kalinske who worked to create both syndicated and network television
programming, which was unheard of for a children’s show. This strategy only
proved to give the character greater potential and a substantial amount of
marketing in the industry. Looking at
the Rogers Diffusion of Innovation Theory, it appeared that the console’s
lifecycle jumped from the Innovators to Late Majority stage as quickly as the
release of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, as
it sold over 6 million total copies, the majority of which came in 1992. The
sales figure was largely unheard of for a single game, and vaulted the company
as the definitive market challenger. Thus, the console wars of Sega and
Nintendo raged throughout the 90’s, with Sonic games becoming marquee moments
in the industry along with other Sega franchises to combat the market leader.
It was only after the rise of the PlayStation that Sega began to falter. A
strong new entrant plus the fledgling Genesis and weaker later consoles (Sega
CD, Sega Saturn) started to erode at the base. While Sega launched the
Dreamcast on 9/9/1999 in North America with a more modern looking Sonic in Sonic Adventure, Kalinske had already left,
and so too had most of its core user base for Sony. As a result, the Sony
PlayStation 2 dominated, and while Nintendo was able to claim stake in the
hardware market, Sega retreated out of the hardware business and focused solely
on software.
(What exactly is happening here?
Credit: equityarcade.com)
While difficult to stomach, leaving the hardware market for
only software was still a smart business decision for Sega. Sonic was put on
multiple platforms, including bitter rival Nintendo’s GameCube, leading to
strong sales despite the lack of exclusive hardware. However, it was arguably
around this same time that the quality of Sonic games began to drop. While
there were certain outliers on Sega platforms (Sonic Labyrinth, Sonic 3D
Blast [more mediocre than outright poor]), heavily critiqued games began to
become the norm. While not all games were definitively poor in quality, Sonic’s
difficulty transitioning from a two dimensional plane to 3D lead to a lot of
hardship. Replicating Sonic’s speed became extremely difficult, and as a result
the franchise focused on gimmicks to improve replayability, such as in Sonic Heroes when a user can play as a
certain team of three characters or in Shadow
the Hedgehog where Sonic’s modern rival Shadow used guns to defeat enemies
along with jumps and a homing attack. Regardless of the gimmicks, the core
gameplay of these games was flawed, and thus received mixed reviews. Still, the
games managed to still sell over 1 million units in total, so the fan affinity
still existed. It was not until the 2006 attempt of reviving the character, Sonic the Hedgehog, did the character
truly fall apart. In an effort to meet the famous holiday demand, Sega and
Sonic Team rushed the reboot of the franchise to make it to market prior to
Christmas. The decision to rush the game ended up being a disastrous for the
company. To quote Mario designer Shigeru Miyamoto, “A delayed game is
eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad” (Parkin, 1). While the
revival still managed to sell a few million, the urgency in development left a
game that was littered with bugs, poor physics, and a rough framerate. Couple
this effort with an awkward and convoluted storyline involving time travel and
a human princess kissing a hedgehog and you have both a catastrophe in the eyes
of the fans and from most major publications.
From this point onward, most Sonic releases have come with a lot of
skepticism.
(Sigh. Credit:
sonic.wikia.com) (The best Sonic game in decades.
Credit: tumblr.com)
Despite this major setback, Sonic has continued to live on. Sonic Unleashed, another game mired in
mediocrity, saw a return to form when it came to speed and platforming, but was
weighed down by monotonous “werehog” sections, where the titular blue blur
would transform into a werewolf version of a hedgehog and go through long
action segments. The game sold well, but again received complaints both from
fans and critics. It wasn’t until Sonic
Colors that fans began to believe in the hedgehog again. With an even
larger focus on speed and platforming, partnered with an excellent soundtrack
and strong level design, the game galvanized the critical and commercial
establishment. As a result, when Sonic
Generations hit the shelves in 2011 it became a mega hit. The game
celebrated the early years of Sonic and the more modern times with an updated
stage set from some of the franchise’s most iconic locations. Critically
praised and a huge commercial success, Sega then looked to capitalize by
selling Sonic games exclusively for the Nintendo Wii U, a console having difficulties making an impact in the
marketplace. When 2013’s Sonic Lost World
failed to meet expectations, Sega decided to remake the mascot entirely in Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric. Taller than
before and with bandages over his hands and legs, Sonic looked extremely
different from both his classic and modern style. Worse, after eight years Sega
repeated history by rushing out a product that was not ready for the market. As
a result, another buggy, boring game was released, only this time fans
responded, making it the worst selling game in Sonic’s history. Sega has since
turned primarily to mobile platforms for Sonic, including one game (Sonic Dash) similar to the popular Temple Run franchise. While these mobile
games have found Sonic fans (Dash has
been downloaded [for free] over 100 million times), they lack the depth that
canon installments had previously, and have left longtime Sonic fans feeling
alienated.
(Another unfortunate result of Sonic’s quality issue –
internet memes. Credit: twitter.com)
The question left to answer then becomes what went wrong for
the fastest thing alive, and unfortunately it’s difficult to fully answer.
First and foremost, it’s worth noting that Sonic has not had the same appeal in
Japan that it has had in the West. While Japan may be smaller than both Europe
and North America, zero of the franchise’s games have sold 1 million copies in
the land of the rising sun (www.VgChartz.com). Whether there were marketing
issues or not enough interest in the character, the blue blur seemed to never
catch on, and there is reason to believe it led to alienation between Sega of
America and Sega of Japan. Regardless, it was not good for there to be internal
strife between departments, as it led to some dysfunction over time.
(Sonic’s
new home, mobile platforms. Credit: Wikipedia.com)
Today, Sega seems less concerned with making a good Sonic
game and instead seems more interested in just releasing a new Sonic game
regardless of quality. In today’s era of gaming it is no secret that Sega has
had consistent financial troubles over the years and has been forced to lay off
staff and shut down offices, resulting in subpar games looking to make money
off of the mascot’s brand recognition. While there may be frustration mounting
with the mobile game cash ins, there have also been outstanding ports of the
original Genesis games to either iOS or Android, meaning there could be a
market for the character on the platform (along with his natural home on the
console). At the end of the day, there are still legions of Sonic fans, and as
Blake Harris, author of Console Wars
stated in a recent interview “[there is] something about the Sonic IP, the
Sonic character that has allowed him to endure over time. Something that made
Sonic familiar enough [to multiple generations]. Everybody wants to see Sonic
succeed.” (Personal Interview) Harris also stated that Sega should not neglect
the mobile market, especially given the casual demand for the product. Kalinske
as well shared his thoughts on Sonic’s potential in mobile, stating “Because so
many people are using tablets or iPhones today, no question about it, you have
to do something there. But I also would have Sonic still on consoles, and I
would have him on more than just the Nintendo consoles.” (Interview, 4/26)
(Would
you believe it if this was a Sega game? It’s actually fan made.
Credit: GBAtemp.com)
It is worth noting that fan involvement in the blue blur is
really something to marvel at. Individuals such as LakeFeperd have created fan
games that have extremely impressive quality. In fact, there is an annual Sonic
Amateur Games Expo every year where creative fans show off their personal game
interpretations of everyone’s favorite hedgehog. Youtube users like
SomecallmeJohnny have dedicated nearly hour long videos discussing the merits
and flaws of certain games (the specific reviewer has nearly an hour long video
review of the Sonic 2006 reboot, quite comprehensive to say the least). This
kind of passion is not seen in many franchises, so whether it be a casual or a
hardcore fan the love for Sonic is truly prevalent.
Nevertheless, Sonic has been relegated to nuanced roles to
try to both attract new fans and bring back old ones, and although that
strategy has worked previously, it seems to be waning. Forbes write
Paul Tassi simply states that Sega should “Go back to Generations and figure out what you did right, and just keep doing
that. Sonic is fine as a mascot, and no makeover will change him for the
better. It's the content of his games that need to be better.” Once again,
content is a critical part of the equation. Looking specifically at the
marketing though, the competitive marketing approach only worked to truly kick
start the fight between Nintendo and Sega, but by the time modern Sonic became
a staple competitive positioning was no longer relevant. Sonic was a household
name, and the attitude that was once revolutionary had begun to dissipate. Unfortunately,
it seems that image based positioning of marketing games became gimmick
focused, much like the games themselves. At the end of the day, Sonic is about
speed, fantastic level design, upbeat tunes, and an overall sense of wonder.
There are not many franchises that make you sit back, eyes wide, mouth agape,
mumbling “Woah” but the 25 year old Sonic
the Hedgehog series can do just that. If Sega can figure that out once
again, it can revive Sonic, I guarantee it.
Sources:
Harris, Blake, Console
Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation. It Books,
5/13/2014
Parkin, Simon, “Shigeru Miyamoto: A rushed game is forever
bad”. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2012/apr/27/shigeru-miyamoto-rushed-game-forever-bad,
4/27/2012.
3/23 Interview with Blake Harris, 3/23 Interview with Paul
Tassi
4/26 Interview with Tom Kalinske
[1] Super Mario World is an outstanding
game, it just might have been a little too familiar in comparison to the brand
new product from Sega
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