Why Sonic Failed and Mario Won

Before I begin I want to say that I’m a bit of a Sega fanboy. I’ve owned every single console Sega has ever made except the Sega Master System since I was too young at the time it came out.

The fact that Mario won and Sonic failed is unfortunately not debatable, the numbers speaks for themselves. The big question is why? So, let’s look at a few points.

When fast paced is too fast paced

Classic_Sonic_-_Running

As a kid I loved the fast paced gameplay Sonic gave me. When I visited friends and played Mario it just looked so boring, I wanted to run like a crazy mofo and finish the whole stage within a minute. For someone that grew up with it I guess that’s fine. But what about people who grew up playing Mario? I’ve had many friends look at me playing Sonic 2 and tell me “it was just too fast paced and they didn’t understand what was happening”. Mario, on the other hand, is more casual and everyone can play it, young or old. Accessibility is an important part of a video game and Sonic might be out of reach for people who are used to the Nintendo gameplay style.

Staying True to their brand

Modern-Sonic-and-Classic-Sonic-sonic-the-hedgehog-21157735-1280-1024

Sega always tried to “update” Sonic by making him hipper and cooler. After all, that was their market, Sonic has always been cooler than Mario but why change a winning formula? In my opinion, that was a really bad marketing call and one of the main reasons for Sonic games performing poorly in the last few years.

Sega retiring from Console manufacturing Market

saturn

After the Saturn Sega had a hard time to keep up with the Market. It’s no secret that the Sega Saturn was not a hit outside of Japan. The console was quickly over-powered by the Playstation which sold 100,000 consoles in its first week, whereas the Saturn only sold 80,000 consoles in its first three months.

After the Saturn, Sega attempted to leap forward with the Dreamcast but the popularity of the Nintendo 64 already had the console struggling at launch. The Playstation 2 later completely killed the Dreamcast and Sega unfortunately had to retire from the console market.

Why does that matter to Sonic? Sega obviously lost a lot of money on the Dreamcast and Saturn and were unable to produce high quality Sonic titles for quite a while.

Some recomforting thoughts

Sonic has been performing better recently, Sonic Colors and Generations both received good scores from critics and players alike. So, as they say, the battle might have been won, but the war is not over.

Tags: sonic, sega, mario

About the Author

Philippe Baghdassarian Phil is the Founder of Arkade.me and loves MMOs and RPGs, his favorite series is The Elder Scrolls.

http://twitter.com/WixelyHolmes ☃

I think your article is very naive.

The reason “sonic failed” is because Sega lost developers willing to make games for their platforms.
Developers stopped trusting them, and eventually so did the consumers.
Sega released tons of peripherals for the Genesis and developers couldn’t keep up with all the technology. When they noticed how “short term” the platforms were (see 32X and the Sega CD), they just flat out couldn’t risk dedicating years to it because the platform would become obsolete so quickly. The Dreamcast was the last straw, it was so soon after the abandonment of the Saturn that developers just stopped signing agreements. The blow was too big for Sega to recover.

Sega went… too fast.

Since that debacle, they have never ever been the same. At that stage we can safely say Sega died. The quality of the sonic games have gone so low they have slim chance of recovering without taking some insane risk that could run themselves into the ground. We may never see a good sonic again.