Is Sonic the Hedgehog near the end?

It seems everywhere you go, professional game critics seem to enjoy bashing the Sonic franchise, it actually makes me sad to tell you the truth. I'm just not talking about X-Play (I hate X-Play by the way) I mean almost every game critic.

Although I like Sonic games they do make a point, to many Sonic fans Sega has poorly developed recent Sonic games, there was Shadow the Hedgehog to try and mature the franchise and that didn't work, then there was Sonic the Hedgehog 360/PS3 but sadly that just made things worse.

Sonic and the Secret Rings helped Sonic a little but again there was mixed reactions amongst Sonic fans and game critics.

So with recent low rated games, and a majority of game critics hating Sonic, is the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise we know it about to be laid to rest?

Sonic titles keep selling in the millions. Heroes sold more than 6 millions on the PS2 and GC accoriding to Wikipedia! Add at least another million through XBOX and PC and you have a game that sold as much as World of Warcraft! [side note: I think Heroes is the best Sonic title of all times, thanks to multiplatform releases]. Shadow has sold significantly less, but still broke the 1 million mark. I don't know about Sonic Next but it currently should be somewhere around 500,000 pcs. When a game sells millions, it is without doubt that sequels will spawn. The only game I know that sold more than 1 million and was not considered a success is Shenmue.

I think there is a general bashing towards Sega overall. Previews for Sega games rarely point out good parts like in other games. When Sega revealed the lineup of games to be showcased in E3, most fans bypassed Sonic Rush Adventure, Mario and Sonic, and NiGHTS and said "Where is Shenmue 3, Jet Set and some-other-game-I-don't-remember-now?". Kotaku always uses a curse word in the same sentence with "Sega" and "Sonic".

If the one platfromer Sonic Rush Adventure and VC not to mention Live arcade can't be satisfing to fans,customers,and of course gamers then thier maybe no more average Sonic games.

When i think of the sonic franchise i think of the new england patriots football team [stay with me folks] the reason i say that is the pats used 2 b TERRIBLE!!!!! much like the sonic games now, but with a few changes weremade andthe teamslowly got better and better, like the 49ers are doing again!!! Sonic in the same way is bad but showing progress. If a few things are changed in the gameplay sonic could easily go from worst 2 first, fix the camera angels, and the collison graphics [like when ur flying down a stage on sonic 360 and u miss the rail and th game keeps pushing you forward 2 ur death] Those along with enemy ai are the biggest culprits in the sonic series......A few changes and the same ppl who said sonic is dead will be singing his praises.... The DBZ budokai series got better over time 2 x-play DOES NOT like DBZ and they hated budokai 1&2 but gamedevelopers continued 2 work and budokai3 was a very worthy 4 out of 5 if not a 5 out of 5, sonic will do the same...

Shadow the Hedgehog was a decent game and so was Sonic 360/PS3, those games are fun but they're nowhere near to being great like Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, but I still think they're good.

Sonic 06 definitely was a shoddy piece of work.
It was rushed. It could've been good if the controls weren't slippery and slow to respond. And terrible load times. 15 seconds to say "ugh"? Gimme a break!
Here's some bad sides from my Sonic fan friend who beat the game:
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"Multiplayer Co-op does NOT allow you to choose the level, Silver can't touch his enimes, Silver AND Shadow can't Spindash, Quite frankly spindash is useless in this game, it seems SEGA thought that you would know the exact level design the first time through, the plot which was pretty good throughout the game turns out to never have happened, Princess Elise, the Supersonic and Supershadow and Supersilver vs. Solaris battle was terrible and boring, Shadow's homing attack makes him stop in mid-air and freeze, Shadow's jump dash color is no longer yellow, to play as Amigos you have to find them in the level for a 2 minute part, SEGA charges money for some of the fun things in the game, the Town stages get boring unless you upgrade Sonic because they are so large that you waste time especially with Silver, Load times for the smallest thing are forever! I'm not just saying little things, but if a guy wants to say "Ugh" it takes 15 seconds to load...dead serious and that is literal and a great looking cutscene with better than ingame graphics takes 2 seconds to load...whats up with that?, some bosses are great while some are crap, Knuckles and Rouge can't glide into enemies, Tails has to throw dummy rings to hurt enemies, Silver has upgradable moves and they all suck, Shadow can turn Dark and it does nothing and Chaos Blast only goes literally about 2 feet away, I'd go on, but I have to go."

Yeah, that's bad. BUt Shadow was a good game.

Not exactly, everyone on Gamespot focuses on FPSs and slightly on RPGs and startegy games. And mark my words when I say that there will be AT LEAST one reference to the "bumpy past of the Hedgehog" on EVERY SINGLE review of EVERY SINGLE Sonic game in the future, and many will say "I still have that bitter taste of Shadow and Next in my mouth, so I didn't enjoy this game too. 5/10 Good points: Everything, Bad points: Sonic"Dark_Mits

Sega is indeed stupid. It's sad, cuz Sonic is so cool.

i think iremeber what ur talkin about and it was refering 2 a bad camera angle or somethin. thats why they used the joke again it was still tru

"Just wait 'till you see the sequel! They get together again, and this time they have kids"

Damn thats gross!!!

Sonic hasn't had a good run into the 3rd-dimension. Even his first pass out of 2D (Sonic 3D for Genesis) was bad.
A few more like Sonic andthe Secret Rings, and Sonic will be back on track. Any more like Sonic 06, and his future will be dim.

Unless he gets into Super Smash Bros. Brawl, then (unless he really sucks) he won't die off.

Unless he gets into Super Smash Bros. Brawl, then (unless he really sucks) he won't die off.demoman_chaos

I thinkSonic will last as long as Shun Nakamura said: "20 or 30 years". But it disappointing how Sonic isn't big a player he was before. In Sonic Adventure 1, there was this huge production meeting and I saw all these people in. I don't see that anymore.People even say Sonic Adventure 2 was the lastgood Sonic game.Maybe SEGA is still upset over the Dreamcast (LONG LIVE THE DREAMCAST!). I think Yuji Naka must come back. SA1, SA2, and Heroes did very well. Shadow may have been hated butcome on. That was only one game. Sonic Riders didn't exactly get a bad rating but yeah it did have its flaws. But Gamespot still cutted Sonic some slack! Maybe if Yuji Naka stayed and devoloped Sonic Next Gen... it would have been a complete game. And what was the point of delaying the PS3 version when it was the EXACT same thing?

By the way, about everyone calling Sonic Next a rushed, incomplete game... Sonic Adventure started off glitchy when it was first released in Japan but it was all the same. Perhaps the same will happen to Next Gen.