Sonic Mania (August 15th 2017, Christian Whitehead, PS4, Xbox One, PC, Switch) - The New Classic

[molul]

That would fit in the "1 month from E3" I've been expecting.

[SuaveKnux]

Why can't there be a release date already...

[sonicspeed2017]

On 5/19/2017 at 7:53 PM, Jango said:

This means it's closer than we thought! Perhaps a July release?

or Sega could pull a fast one and release it during E3 2017

[Dejimon11]

38 minutes ago, sonicspeed2017 said:

or Sega could pull a fast one and release it during E3 2017

Man when they said that Mania is a SEGA Saturn game they were really taking it to heart. 

[BlueFlare]

I just read "PLAY THE GAMEDEMO" quickly and thought, "Ok when is it ready for dowload"...but no. 

[Sonicfan287]

I really don't see why they couldn't have at least a demo of Green Hill Zone Act 1 available. How hard would it be to simply port the demo build from all the conventions to home console? 

Ive been following this game for so long and just want to see first hand how it plays and feels 

[FriendBot]

The reason why SEGA hasn't released a demo for Mania is because they are fully aware of how people can hack into the demo and find all sorts of secrets, similar to what happened with Generations. The entire game was spoiled because of that, so SEGA are going for a more reserved approach to make sure the game won't be spoiled before it got released and you know what? I'm perfectly ok with that, I want to be surprised of what I'm going to play in Mania.

[Blue Blood]

18 minutes ago, Sonicfan287 said:

I really don't see why they couldn't have at least a demo of Green Hill Zone Act 1 available. How hard would it be to simply port the demo build from all the conventions to home console? 

Ive been following this game for so long and just want to see first hand how it plays and feels 

Well, although what FriendBot said is partially true, it's hardly why they haven't released a demo. Demo's take time to build. They aren't just incomplete versions of a game - they're entirely separate builds that require their own QA and bug testing. That would be up to four different versions of the game for the small development team to put together which would significantly take away time and resources that would be better spent on actually making the game itself. The demo builds that are used at events/press showings needn't go through any rigorous testing because they're not available for the mass public to play at will. And as we've already seen, there are bugs in the current demos. So how hard would be? Not impossible to physically do, but not a walk in the park either and it's totally impractical and would be stupid. 

[TheOcelot]

25 minutes ago, Sonicfan287 said:

I really don't see why they couldn't have at least a demo of Green Hill Zone Act 1 available. How hard would it be to simply port the demo build from all the conventions to home console? 

Ive been following this game for so long and just want to see first hand how it plays and feels 

Creating a separate playable demo without all relevant secrets so as not to spoil other content (as alluded to by FriendBot) is an extremely time-consuming process (could takes months), especially with Mania having such a small dev team. It just isn't practical.

To be honest a demo really isn't needed. I can tell you from my own experience (when I played it at SoS) that Sonic controls beautifully just like in Sonic 3. This game plays like a dream, looks like a dream...goddamn, my hype levels are going up again 

[Sonicfan287]

Fair enough. I'd even settle for kiosk demos at Gamestops and other stores the same way they're doing for Crash NSane Trilogy. I'm buying that game either way but it was really cool to get a taste of it and for some, it may sway their decision to buy. 

That way it would only need to be made for one console and couldn't be hacked. I'm not saying it needs to be released now but perhaps when we're within a month or less of release. 

Of course that's just the impatient Sonic fan in me. I feel like this has been the least amount of info I've seen Sega reveal about a game given the fact that we're coming up on a year since it's announcement. 

I dont want to be spoiled about everything about the game either although I am admittedly curious and the way they've been randomly revealing things about Sonic Forces lately has me waiting and hoping that Mania news is forthcoming 

5 minutes ago, OcelotBot said:

Creating a separate playable demo without all relevant secrets so as not to spoil other content (as alluded to by FriendBot) is an extremely time-consuming process (could takes months), especially with Mania having such a small dev team. It just isn't practical.

To be honest a demo really isn't needed. I can tell you from my own experience (when I played it at SoS) that Sonic controls beautifully just like in Sonic 3. This game plays like a dream, looks like a dream...goddamn, my hype levels are going up again 

I guess I'm just not familiar with how demos work. Do they really take months because I can remember plenty of games where demos released shortly before or even after their release. Did they just develop a demo version alongside the final build or what? 

[CleverSonicUsername]

Data mining demos is pretty prevalent outside of Sonic games too, from what I recall. I remember Arkham Asylum having its full boss roster leaked because people snooped around in the demo.

As much as I would love to get my hands on this game in any capacity, there's also something very exciting about knowing I won't be able to until the day of release, and then I can just go through the whole thing at once. Playing a demo, as fun as that would be, might only get me more hyped up and make the wait all the more interminable.

[Blue Blood]

As soon as we get a release date, I'm booking the day off work. No questions. 

[Maxtiis]

I'd be fine with a demo but I suppose it would be naive of me to hope no one would post unmarked spoilers of any info they may or may not find in its data. But I'm more anxious for a release date, if I could just have that I'd be pacified.

At least the wait for this isn't nearly as bad as the drought of information we had in 2015 after the Sega of America restructure. Nearly a full year of silence almost immediately after Rise of Lyric and Shattered Crystal bombed stung pretty bad.

[Sonicfan287]

A release date is pretty much all I want at this point (that and a demo lol) 

even if the wait is a few months I'd at least like to know and just have a date in my mind. If it's releasing sooner than that, even better.

Honestly just preparing for the worst case scenario in terms of release date because that delay was kind of a punch in the gut after we had finally been getting more info about the game. It looked like the announcement was imminent and then we get news of the delay and it's back to silence. 

So as much as I'm hoping we get the release date for real at e3, I also wouldn't be surprised if Aaron says "whoops, games delayed until fall" 

Then again it has already been ESRB rated so that's a good sign 

[Gemster312]

I can't imagine what would cause a small game like this be pushed back from Spring 2017 to Fall 2017.

They still have until September 22nd until it is technically outside of the "Summer Window". So unless they still can't finish this game in the next 4 months (even though it already has an ESRB rating), I can't see it getting pushed back any further.

I think they are just quiet because they had a planned "reveal schedule" where they would show off info on a regular basis, but the delay pushed back the release, and because the same amount of info still wants to be hinted at, it needs to span over a larger course of time (hence the empty voids of time).

My theory tho

[Sonicfan287]

I'm figuring that's just a catastrophic worst case scenario. I'm confident that we are, at most 3 months out. 

I always wonder how companies approach or decide on release dates when it comes to finished games.

Say Mania is finished by June 1st. They obviously won't release it then and there but how long would they wait? 

I wonder because the release date for NSane Trilogy was revealed in March and it was June 30th. Was that game already finished in April and they just decided to sit on it for 2 months or did they make that release date knowing the development cycle would be ending around June?

im just curious if Sega will do the same and wait as long as possible to release the game to build more hype over the summer 

[HywelAtTheMoon]

That said, the Switch version hasn't been rated yet. Not sure how many Collector's Editions will be made either. They won't release anything until all versions are ready. Hopefully, it won't be long. 

[Gemster312]

I think that depends on what your definition of "finished" is.

Like, the core of the game (all levels done, all physics done, most sound/music/art completed, all programming done) is usually finished 2-3 months prior to the game's release. The final few months are dedicated to polishing and bug fixing. Polishing takes a while, as you are taking something that is already great, and turning it into something fantastic (this is a step often missing in rushed games, and that's why they end up releasing so broken and bad looking). Bug fixing also takes a lot of play testing and then fixing minor errors can either be really quick and easy, or if a serious bug is found within something like the physics engine, repairing it could break the rest of the game. So for example, a glitch is found that at a certain speed Sonic clips through walls. A fix of that might bring on different bugs, so after some adjustments are made, the entire system has to go through rigorous testing again to ensure nothing else new pops up.

A game usually has 3 phases of development:

-Concept (can take multiple years for big projects, but typically is about 25% of game development time)
-Development (building the game, testing, tweaking, changing concepts, programming, all the essentials, typically about 45% of the game development time)
-Polish (minor changes, quality of life additions, bonus systems, extra details, bug fixes, typically about 30% of game development time)

Granted, I am speaking on terms of a project that isn't rushed and properly managed, but polishing a game after it is technically "finished" can take multiple months, and for all we know the game could have been done back in March they just wanted extra time to polish everything extra fine to ensure this game is a gem.

[TheOcelot]

We have no idea what state the game was in when the delay was announced back in March. For all we know a release date could be imminent (got my fingers crossed for just before E3), at least that's the impression I get with the ESRB rating confirmed. It won't be like Crash Bandicoot with the release date being announced three months before release. I think the release dates for the mobile remasters were announced about a month (maybe slightly less) before release? So, I'm guessing a June announcement would be followed by a July release.

 

5 hours ago, Blue Blood said:

As soon as we get a release date, I'm booking the day off work. No questions. 

Lucky you! I'd love to be able to book a day off work......I wish

*gets home from work, plays Mania non-stop, doesn't wash or eat. Gets two hours sleep* rinse, repeat XD

 

[Badnik Mechanic]

17 minutes ago, Gemster312 said:

-Concept (can take multiple years for big projects, but typically is about 25% of game development time)
-Development (building the game, testing, tweaking, changing concepts, programming, all the essentials, typically about 45% of the game development time)
-Polish (minor changes, quality of life additions, bonus systems, extra details, bug fixes, typically about 30% of game development time)

Even if you convert those things labels to what they're actually known as, those development values are quite off.

[Gemster312]

1 minute ago, Mayor D said:

Even if you convert those things labels to what they're actually known as, those development values are quite off.

These are development values I got from when talking to developers at Blizzard HQ (Blizzcon 2016) and Pop Cap Games (back when Plants Vs Zombies was just released I got to take a tour of the office). As a game developer myself, I also can confirm that these values are in the general ballpark of development time.

It varies from company to company, but these are the values that I have witnessed personally and you would probably find similar ones if you asked around. But it still boils down to how much the game developers care about quality/quantity/efficiency.

[Jango]

5 hours ago, Blue Blood said:

As soon as we get a release date, I'm booking the day off work. No questions. 

Jesus.

 

I'm booking the week.

[Sonicfan287]

5 minutes ago, OcelotBot said:

We have no idea what state the game was in when the delay was announced back in March. For all we know a release date could be imminent (got my fingers crossed for just before E3), at least that's the impression I get with the ESRB rating confirmed. It won't be like Crash Bandicoot with the release date being announced three months before release. I think the release dates for the mobile remasters were announced about a month (maybe slightly less) before release? So, I'm guessing a June announcement would be followed by a July release.

 

Lucky you! I'd love to be able to book a day off work......I wish

*gets home from work, plays Mania non-stop, doesn't wash or eat. Gets two hours sleep* rinse, repeat XD

 

Well the beauty of it is, I'd imagine since it's available digitally, you can download it at midnight and start playing right away if you have to work in the morning. Probably not the best idea if you want a good nights sleep but I did it for Sonic 4 episode 1. I also beat it in about an hour so didn't lose much sleep 

[Radiant Hero Ike]

3 minutes ago, Jango said:

Jesus.

 

I'm booking the week.

I don't think it's gonna be that long of a game. Although I guess that means you can play it over and over again.

I'd like it to be pretty long, but I dunno... It's at least longer than Generations, right?

[Sonicfan287]

Having a week off to play a new Sonic game would take me back to my childhood... when I had every week off to play a new Sonic game