If I am to be bit more cynical, I believe the situation is actually a bit more dire than that, and it plays into that. Sonic since the trash fire that was sonic 06 has essentially tailored its image to be more friendly to the adults that had been criticizing the nature of the games in the adventure era. And it never really worked, these people never really invested and sales continued to dwindle, even when games were good. And those same adults continued to clown on those games. Those people outside of mania, never invested. They hold panels as to why sonic was never good, there was no return on investment with that. The suggestion could be made well its more for children, issue with that is, kids didn't stop liking convoluted bullshit because sonic 06 happened. They could have released an adventure type game after that and it was good and it would have been fine. Yes Hindsight is 20/20 and at the time 06 seemed like the biggest garbage fire in the world. But I feel as a buisness its your job to like, look at the future and not just reactionarily adjust to every issue. Unfortunately the latter is how a lot of business do things.
Trust me this is going somewhere
Not only , did kids not stop liking dumb bullshit with stroies. It intensifies. RIght at the moment that sonic decides that it needs to leave all that lore shit behind, every franchise and thier goddamn moma becomes lore hounds. From Adventure time and MLP to the entire MCU all entertainment went" No invest in our dumb bullshit, in our silly worlds and characters " Now sega could have took the hint, and to be fair someone at sega from america did with sonic boom to varying degrees. But for the most part sega just largely seemed blinds to the goings on of its actual contemplates. And just doubled down on its thinking that these jaded adults were a good investment strategy. And trying to copy mario, a series that had long since stopped being its contemporary and who's now rubbing shoulders with mickey mouse at this point. Quite literally with the Nintendo land shit
Now when I say adult I mean a very specific era and or temperment of adult. Obviously there are people who were children when all the 06 and post 06 stuff kicked off who are adults now. But what I mean is this older, classic sonic focused nostalgic crowd that didn't like all this adventure era stuff is what I mean by adult. That's who they were aiming for... and failed.
So where are those people now? Gone. They bought mania and dipped. They didn't care about the fourthwall jokes and all the self deprication, they only wanted a sonic game that looked like and played like what they remember as a kid. And they got that.
Where does that leave sega, in a dire position. You see remember when I mentioned they are paying attention to their contemplates? Sega has been making a bunch of descions in regards to charactes, stories and tone because they seem like they are gonna start using them again and possibly taking themselves a smidge bit more seriously in regards to sonic? So yay right? No, most of its bad. Not just bad, but bad in a way that suggests they...don't understand why people liked that stuff in the first place. Simplyfying things way too fair in a world where again, a show like my little pony of all things can have dramatic tone shifts. Someone behind the scenes very clearly thinks that kids can't handle some fun weird sillynes. But that's kind of what the franchise is built on.
So not only does this indicate that no one is sega is looking at sonic's actual contemplates, things like TMNT, transformers, various CN shows and the like, actual new video games franchises that are doing well with children with weird crazy lore they invest in with tone shifts. They don't even remember or have people there who know why people liked the sonic stuff they liked because there was a point where that was sonic's appeal. This statement can apply to gameplay too. They just don't seem to know why anyone likes anything. That's what happens when you decide that the thing that will keep a franchise known for its weird bullshit that appeals to kids relevant are adults who never gave a fuck.
