In an interview with Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu, Sega CEO Hajime Satomi apologized for the smelly pile of broken dreams that was the game Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric for Nintendo Wii U.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for Mega Drive/Genesis was especially good.
Back in the early ’90s, Sonic the Hedgehog was doing everything right. Sega was in neck-and-neck competition with Nintendo, and the speedy blue ring-collecting hedgehog was their beautiful poster child. But when the console war picked up in the late ’90s, Sega fell behind and newcomers PlayStation and Xbox picked up steam. As Satomi explained in the interview, after that, Sega only had its reputation.
“For this reason, we’d like to win back the customers’ trust, and become a brand once again,” Satomi said.
In the interview, which was translated by gaming website Siliconera, Satomi also referenced Sega’s 2013 purchase of game company Atlus. Atlus is responsible for the Persona game series, among others. Satomi spoke hopefully about how much they’ve been able to learn from Atlus in the year and a half since the acquisition.
But more importantly, he seemed legitimately sorry for creating the horrific swamp puddle of despair that is Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric.
“I’ve been talking to the employees about how we should start putting serious consideration into quality from this point on,” Satomi said. “I believe that if we can’t maintain quality, it would be better to not release anything at all.”
Well. Thank you for trying, anyway.
There’s a new Sonic game slated for release at the end of the year for Nintendo 3DS called Sonic Boom: Fire and Ice. We’ll see then if Sega can live up to Satomi’s sage advice.
Read our original review of Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric.
