Initial Sales of Sonic Superstars Were 'Weaker Than Anticipated', Says SEGA

LMAO, they really thought Sonic Superstars will be less popular?!

Bro, it's a old-school game with a very unique concept without Green Hill Zone & there friends, of course it was going to be literally VIRAL

The most commonly cited reason by everyone is the game wasn't priced competitively for what was offered. Do they just not want to admit this?

Releasing the game just days before SMBW was probably not a good idea!

I've always been a much bigger modern fan so maybe I'm a bit biased, but like I've heard others say, there's just not enough material to make it feel worthy of being a full-priced game. It's nice to include new characters and additional story, but otherwise it just feels like no extra effort was put in. I wasn't a fan of the music too much, or the level design of some zones, so that doesn't help either. I think the biggest reason for these feelings though are with it releasing after Frontiers, one of the biggest Sonic games we've had in a long time, you can't help but compare it, and it makes this seem low effort. I am enjoying my playthrough of Superstars, but I can already tell it's not going to be a Sonic game I will really ever go back to, as I'm playing single player mostly. I love Sonic too much so I don't regret paying full price lol but I'm not blaming anyone who is waiting for it to go on sale.

I think there are limits to the amount of content you can add to this structure of game, so when it comes to quantity I would say "it needed to be cheaper" before "it needed to be longer" - though with that said, if Story Mode save files were single-character only, I would've played it through four times.  Nah, the issue is quality.  Everything from the final boss onwards ("final" in as many inverted commas as you care to place) just left such a bad taste in my mouth.  Releasing right next to Super Mario Bros. Wonder merely compounded the issue.  That's not the kind of word of mouth Sonic needed.

3 hours ago, SolidSurgeTT said:

The most commonly cited reason by everyone is the game wasn't priced competitively for what was offered. Do they just not want to admit this?

Yeah out of all the reasons offered, this is the one I agree with and feel is the most likely. Mania was on a similar content level and was cheaper. While Mario has always been somewhat present during the Meta Era.

I think the main issues were:

Too pricey for a 2d game, 

A mess of digital deluxe / retailer exclusive DLCs which may have put some off pre ordering

Strong competition from other games

Despite some good reviews, there were some lukewarm ones which may have put off some "older" fans.

HOPEFULLY Sega will not pull the plug on it and will add further DLC like Frontiers. Despite some minor issues, there is a really good game in there and I would love to see a sequel that irons these shortcomings out.

1. It cost too much. Everyone noted this was the case as soon as Sega announced it was going to be a full priced game, because everyone remembered that this was the same criticism that Dread got when Nintendo announced it even though Dread was always a much more substantial looking game with much better production values that actually tried to justify its price.
2. The initial announcement of the game went over with a thud for reasons ranging from the 2008 XBLA art style (that Sega needed to immediately try to justify by saying they wanted to charge more for it than they did Mania, which was true but an interesting PR strategy) to the fact that Sega was ballsy enough to farm it out to Arzest and simply hope that everyone would forget that "Oshiima is working on this" was the same PR pitch Balan Wonderworld used, to the middling previews that relied on the fandom to insist how great it plays, and early questions about things that normally no Sonic fan has to worry about (the shit music most notably being something people expressed concerns over).
3. It wasn't a sequel to Mania. It caught shit for that immediately. It caught shit for that as screengrabs and videos for the game trickled out over the summer and it continued looking like a budget game from 2008. It caught shit for that as it went through the review cycle when it was constantly compared, negatively, to Mania. It has continued to get shit for that since it released. It didn't review as good as Mania, it never had the hype of Mania, it always lived in the shadow of Mania and it cost twice as much as Mania.
4. The main console that people were overwhelmingly going to buy it for got a notably ugly port, with graphics that sometimes approach something Game Freak would find acceptable that still doesn't even run great.

But pretend none of that was true. Even if Sega didn't release an obviously-budget, seemingly-rushed title contracted out to a developer who had become a punchline with a full price tag for a terrible looking Switch port to middling reviews that repeatedly noted how inferior it was to its immediate predecessor, the idiot at Sega who saw that Super Mario Wonder was going to be released on October 20th, waited a full month to see how much news about Wonder dominated the gaming news cycle and only then announced that it was going to come out three days prior should be fired into the sun. That Sega still had to lower their expectations from their thoughts when any discussion about Superstars was completely drowned out of the room as soon as the first picture of Mario as an elephant was uploaded onto the internet and it was clear that Nintendo wasn't lazily shitting out another NSMB game tells me that they are just as clueless with this franchise as they were in 2006 even when it is as healthy as it is now.

If you didn't feel the need to get it day one it was a fairly safe bet that a sale was only a month away.

18 minutes ago, Tornado said:

with graphics that sometimes approach something Game Freak would find acceptable

That's savage, but speaking as a Pokemon fan despite all of the myriad missteps the franchise has taken in the past decade, I'd say that's not nearly as savage as "something ILCA would find acceptable."

I think the reason why Sonic Superstars didn't quite sell as well was because there wasn't a lot of build up to it.  Unlike Sonic Frontiers, where there was a lot of build up to the game, Sonic Superstars just came out of nowhere and many people probably didn't notice that the game was coming out.

I bought it during black friday and I think that the $34.99 price is reasonable. Not $60!

8 hours ago, The Swordsman said:

Yeah out of all the reasons offered, this is the one I agree with and feel is the most likely. Mania was on a similar content level and was cheaper. While Mario has always been somewhat present during the Meta Era.

Nah, this game had more to it than Mania but I think it should have come in at $50.

Who in their right mind sitting in Sega's HQ was able to convince everyone that they should set their expectations on Frontiers' sales figures? That's the real crime here. Even without the steep competition and the upcoming holiday season kneecapping peoples interest in spending full price on this game, that benchmark alone pretty much set up the game to "under-perform expectations"

Mania was literally the equivalent of Jesus descending from heaven and gifting mana in the form of "true Sonic 4" to the franchise, and in twice the time it and Mania+ have sold half the units of Frontiers. HALF. and that is even taking into account that Mania is a legit 10/10 for many people. 2D Sonic in this day and age doesn't belong in the same hemisphere of conversation. To set that as your expectation is to set yourself up for failure. Did they really think a 2.5D paintjob was enough to bridge that gap?

Whoever pushed that earnings forecast has their head in the clouds. 

1 hour ago, SolidSurgeTT said:

Nah, this game had more to it than Mania but I think it should have come in at $50.

Eh, Mania and Superstars have very similar stage counts even if Act Fruit is taken out of the equation. Besides that the only new advertised standout features like the multiplayer; which in the nicest terms is pretty underbaked, as well as the battle mode; which feels lackluster.  $30-35 would have been sufficient. But frankly, I am overall annoyed that these issues may not even be patched until a Superstars Plus.  Even if patch is free, the multiplayer is held by shoestrings on all platforms yet we probably won't see any major changes until a whole year later.  That I feel,  is an issue that a lot of people seemingly haven't brought up. 

In my humble opinion, I think this would be a good time for SEGA to learn that Old Reliable isn't that reliable anymore. They've killed the Classic Sonic hype, and I think it's time to let it go. I hope they start focusing more on the now rather than trying to reinvent something that was perfectly fine to begin with. 

14 hours ago, Sega DogTagz said:

Who in their right mind sitting in Sega's HQ was able to convince everyone that they should set their expectations on Frontiers' sales figures? That's the real crime here. Even without the steep competition and the upcoming holiday season kneecapping peoples interest in spending full price on this game, that benchmark alone pretty much set up the game to "under-perform expectations"

 

Mania was literally the equivalent of Jesus descending from heaven and gifting mana in the form of "true Sonic 4" to the franchise, and in twice the time it and Mania+ have sold half the units of Frontiers. HALF. and that is even taking into account that Mania is a legit 10/10 for many people. 2D Sonic in this day and age doesn't belong in the same hemisphere of conversation. To set that as your expectation is to set yourself up for failure. Did they really think a 2.5D paintjob was enough to bridge that gap?

 

Whoever pushed that earnings forecast has their head in the clouds. 

While I agree with you on Frontier's sales figures, to be fair to SEGA on the comparison to Mania it wasn't just a 2.5D paintjob. The game had brand new stages, a great new playable character and a far better and far more stasifying plot. (though to be fair to Mania thats partly due to the stupid Ruby not having a consistent powerset due to being tied to Forces though that doesn't excuse Encore mode's ending)

9 hours ago, cosmichaos said:

In my humble opinion, I think this would be a good time for SEGA to learn that Old Reliable isn't that reliable anymore. They've killed the Classic Sonic hype, and I think it's time to let it go. I hope they start focusing more on the now rather than trying to reinvent something that was perfectly fine to begin with. 

Nah - Superstars is fun from what I've played of it and I'd like to see them continue on that formula and make a more refined game in a similar style. Plenty of people still like 2D platformers. They just need to put it a bit more effort, be smarter about when they release things, and temper their expectations.

12 hours ago, Monkey Destruction Switch said:

Nah - Superstars is fun from what I've played of it and I'd like to see them continue on that formula and make a more refined game in a similar style. Plenty of people still like 2D platformers. They just need to put it a bit more effort, be smarter about when they release things, and temper their expectations.

I agree.  I'll say this for Superstars: I think it will be a very useful learning experience.  Sega and Arzest will have had a lot of feedback from this and I'm looking forward to seeing how that shapes future 2D-perspective games.