Takashi Iizuka Takashi Iizuka Reveals Lack of Unified Vision Led to 2007 Sonic Team Restructure

[Dreadknux]

Sonic Team Creative Officer Takashi Iizuka revealed that he went to Japan in 2007 to help restructure the development studio under a unified vision, following a series of projects with varying directions - and as a result, now oversees the entire franchise to the point where "there's not a whole day that I don't think about Sonic."

Recounting his multi-decade career at SEGA in a new interview with GameInformer, Iizuka noted that the development approach of Sonic Team in the mid-2000s tended to follow whichever director was assigned to the current project at the time:

"The Japanese Sonic Team was creating new games according to the vision of whichever director was leading the individual project," Iizuka said, "That's how they created Sonic Unleashed, Secret Rings and Sonic (2006). There wasn't anyone controlling production from the top. Each director and producer were creating their own titles during this time.

"So when I got back to Japan (in 2007) each of those directors was creating Sonic titles based on their own interpretations (of what Sonic was)... I didn't think it was very good."

While there are certainly fans of each of those three titles, it is probably fair to say that there was a lack of cohesion about what the franchise should look and feel like. Unleashed, Secret Rings and 2006 all had wildly different visual styles, canonical approaches and core gameplay styles (although you could argue that Secret Rings was a spinoff). For Iizuka, it was important to "unify" the design language and gameplay core for future titles (which likely would have started with Sonic Colors in 2010).

"I put all of that together and created a system to have a unified vision," Iizuka continues. "We could now control the Sonic brand in a unified manner."

The SEGA exec added that his role has since expanded greatly; "When I was working in Japan, I was overseeing Sonic games, specifically. I covered management, quality control, and was acting as a point of contact for SEGA of America... But now it's truly [a] truly global experience and I'm in America. I came to the US to oversee games, animation and merchandising globally.

"Now I'm engaged with all aspects of the business, which is the difference between now and my time in Japan."

The whole interview can be viewed below, and it's worth a watch - there's a rather sad story about how Sonic Team became a little deflated during Sonic Adventure 2's development after hearing the news of SEGA's decision to become a third party publisher, as well as other interesting facts about his Mega Drive days (including a mention of Devi & Pii - which the Sonic Stadium first asked him about during our meet at Gamescom 2022!)

Source: GameInformer

Sonic News Tips Credit:
Wraith

Original Post Content:
What the description doesn't detail is a small anecdote about the "restructuring" of Sonic Team that took place after Unleashed, and how that solidified a unified vision for the brand that exists to this day.

Nothing you SEGA historians probably haven't heard already, but it's interesting to hear it all from the perspective of the man himself.

View full story

[Cyb3rkn1ght]

Ahhhh, no WONDER Unleashed was so out of pocket (and peak, gameplay-wise, the games are all good music-wise)

[Jango]

None of what Iizuka said made sense, like usually... All the games from then untill today still pretty much varied in scope, gameplay, quality, tone and even canon. 

I actually like the idea of switching directors once in a while to bring new ideas and gameplay, it's just that the ones at Sonic Team just aren't really good...

I'll give Iizuka something tho', at least the games from 2010-beyond were fairly less glitchy, but then again, most of them are 3 hours long experiences The longest one since, Sonic Frontiers, is again super buggy and rushed.

Edited April 10 by Jango

[captobvious42]

I'm guessing this is also when they started to, for both better AND for worse, started trying to get the comics more in-line with the series. Better as it tried to focus more on Sonic after Penders tried to make the focus on Knuckles and his clones clan, but worse as some of the guidelines are rather overzealous on how the characters should act (looking at Shadow's treatment in IDW until recently.)

[edit] Jango's kinda right, though for awhile it did seem the games, the main ones anyways, were using the one thing that worked for Unleashed which was the Daytime level engine. Forces kinda botched it, though I think there's probably some things behind the scenes that likely had a hand in how that turned out.

As for Lost World, I think I heard a theory that it was meant to be a Mario-crossover game which, while there's no actually proof, does make some sense; maybe they spent a lot of money building the concept that they didn't want to simply throw it away.

Edited April 9 by captobvious42

[jungle_penguins]

Say was there ever given explanations for the US side of Sonic Team being absorbed back? Or is this the main reason? 

[Maple Syrup]

It reminds me of when I ask my sister to not trash my room and she does. Unleashed and Lost World were pretty unhinged to be honest.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

This explains A LOT of why everything from 06 and after were so out of order from previous titles and why people were having trouble trying to fit things into canon.

Someone took something and put it into a work that was completely unconnected, and didn’t think through how fans would put that into continuity.

[Metal]

Maybe this is a hot take, but the lack of cohesion within the franchise wasn't a problem. I'd even say it was a strength. The problem was that the games of that period were all crap (Unleashed was about 1/3 of a great game). Now granted, the quality did generally improve following this period so good on him for doing that. Colors and Generations are both good and while I personally dislike it I can't deny that even Lost World is a much more polished game than the likes of Heroes or Secret Rings. But the plots and settings have taken an absolute nosedive. And I don't think I need to retread how tiring it is for nostalgia bait to be trotted out over and over again. If that is being done in the name of "cohesion" then I'll take the patchwork divisive plots of the 90s and 2000s instead thank you.

[Rusty Spy]

Not exactly a shocking revelation; anyone with eyes could've told you Sonic Team lacked cohesion in the 00s, at least now we know who to thank(?) for fixing that.

17 hours ago, Metal said:

Maybe this is a hot take, but the lack of cohesion within the franchise wasn't a problem. I'd even say it was a strength. The problem was that the games of that period were all crap (Unleashed was about 1/3 of a great game).

A big factor for why the games sucked definitely had to have been that lack of cohesion; Iizuka describes how every director and producer was doing their own thing, and that kind of direction would've prevented their games from actually building upon a cohesive foundation rather than throwing darts at a wall and seeing what sticks

Edited April 10 by Rusty Spy

[Metal]

6 hours ago, Rusty Spy said:

A big factor for why the games sucked definitely had to have been that lack of cohesion; Iizuka describes how every director and producer was doing their own thing, and that kind of direction would've prevented their games from actually building upon a cohesive foundation rather than throwing darts at a wall and seeing what sticks

I have to disagree here. The reason most of them sucked is because they were getting churned out at a breakneck pace. Cohesion wasn't the reason 06 was insanely buggy, it was because it needed another 2 years of dev time. You could perhaps argue that because the games didn't have a consistent core gameplay between them they had to scramble to reinvent the wheel with every new game, but look at the stretch of games from Generations, Lost World, Forces, and Frontiers and you'll see that problem still exists now. I'd even argue it's worse than ever.

[Lorekitten]

10 hours ago, Metal said:

I have to disagree here. The reason most of them sucked is because they were getting churned out at a breakneck pace. Cohesion wasn't the reason 06 was insanely buggy, it was because it needed another 2 years of dev time. You could perhaps argue that because the games didn't have a consistent core gameplay between them they had to scramble to reinvent the wheel with every new game, but look at the stretch of games from Generations, Lost World, Forces, and Frontiers and you'll see that problem still exists now. I'd even argue it's worse than ever.

It's kind of ironic that Sonic's past issues are blamed on lack of cohesion, Pokemon's past issues have been blamed on a lack of change, but when you look at them both together you realize they both had the SAME issue, and that's the games being rushed.

Sonic has taken some steps in the right direction, and given the 2025 release date for Pokemon Legends Z-A, I'm hoping Pokemon is doing the same thing... though given how many times I've been burned in the past few years, forgive me for being skeptical.

[Rusty Spy]

14 hours ago, Metal said:

I have to disagree here. The reason most of them sucked is because they were getting churned out at a breakneck pace. Cohesion wasn't the reason 06 was insanely buggy, it was because it needed another 2 years of dev time. You could perhaps argue that because the games didn't have a consistent core gameplay between them they had to scramble to reinvent the wheel with every new game, but look at the stretch of games from Generations, Lost World, Forces, and Frontiers and you'll see that problem still exists now. I'd even argue it's worse than ever.

Plenty of game franchises have short turnarounds on games. Ratchet, Jak and Sly all had sequels coming out annually around the same time. They all had a strong foundation and each new game simply built upon that foundation. People always say (x) Sonic game needed another 1/2/3 more years of dev time to, but in my honest opinion that's just an excuse to not have to admit that Sonic Team simply aren't very good game developers, but I digress. I'm not sure what problem Generations, Lost World, Forces, and Frontiers has that you're referring to specifically; are you saying those games are still bad despite having a consistent core gameplay?

[niaco]

Interesting interview. This restructure makes sense for Sonic team at the time, I guess, but it somehow bums me out still. The chances of getting one of the weird-and-neat games (like a Riders, storybook, or Unleashed game) that we'd get from that era is, these days, probably not possible. Sonic's already pretty established and I don't think they'll ever again have as much pressure to experiment. Modern gaming's pretty different anyway...
I guess we're still getting silly stuff like The Murder, though. I'm not disappointed with where we are.

Edited April 11 by niaco

[captobvious42]

27 minutes ago, Rusty Spy said:

Plenty of game franchises have short turnarounds on games. Ratchet, Jak and Sly all had sequels coming out annually around the same time. They all had a strong foundation and each new game simply built upon that foundation. People always say (x) Sonic game needed another 1/2/3 more years of dev time to, but in my honest opinion that's just an excuse to not have to admit that Sonic Team simply aren't very good game developers, but I digress. I'm not sure what problem Generations, Lost World, Forces, and Frontiers has that you're referring to specifically; are you saying those games are still bad despite having a consistent core gameplay?

Personally, I think the only problems with Generations and Frontiers are the endgames. For Generations, Planet Wisp Act 2 ends up being a bit of a slog and the final boss is very underwhelming (and the rest of the cast telling you the obvious is a bit annoying.) Frontiers' final act was rushed, with everything past the third island being a rehash of the first island and Supreme being a rehash of Giganto and the final boss being a sudden shoot-em up. Admittedly, despite the fact the game was rushed, I didn't encounter a lot of glitches compared to Sonic '06 or Boom, which I find funny compared to Pokemon Scarlet/Violet.

I mentioned Lost World before. The gameplay was VERY different from the previous games and the villains weren't all that interesting and probably some of the worst. It felt like it was an experiment more than anything.

Don't know what the deal was with Forces. I think there was some behind the scenes nonsense going on. I do want them to try something more with the avatar, but maybe in a side game. 

I think they should probably focus on fine-tuning the current engine rather than trying to built anything new unless its for a non-mainline game.

[Metal]

19 hours ago, Rusty Spy said:

I'm not sure what problem Generations, Lost World, Forces, and Frontiers has that you're referring to specifically; are you saying those games are still bad despite having a consistent core gameplay?

I'm saying that there is no consistent core gameplay. Generations built on the boost gameplay they had used a few times before, but then Lost World was totally different, Forces threw out the Lost World gameplay to go back to the Boost and Classic from Generations except somehow worse, and then Frontiers threw that out again to do yet another totally new thing. Every game is different from the game that came before and that's without including spinoffs like Iizuka did in his example. I don't think you can blame the quality of older games entirely on a lack of consistent gameplay when that problem still exists.

And with all due respect, games that come out annually and are good exist, sure, but they are the exception rather than the rule. Sly Cooper, a series with 4 games that hasn't released any in over a decade, is not exactly proof of concept that annual game releases can or should be normalized.