Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric and Shattered Crystal are two of the worst selling Sonic games of all time, according to Sega’s parent company’s quarterly earnings report.
Combined with the underperformance of these two games, Sega’s arcade business, Sammy’s amusement business, and an organizational restructure lead Sega Sammy to predict a 13 billion yen ($109 million) loss for this year.
Some highlights for Sega, though, included Alien: Isolation, which sold 1.76 million copies from it’s October release to the end of December, as well as Football Manager 2015, which sold 640,000 units for PC and mobile devices. I hear walking around in a suit on a grass field and watching a bunch of guys kick a ball around is big in other parts of the world.
Meanwhile, the two Sonic Boom games sold a combined 490,000 copies, easily making them the worst console games ever for the blue hedgehog, but continue what has been a marked downward trend for Sonic for years now. Sonic Colors sold 1.85 million units in a similar timespan in 2010 and Sonic Generations sold 1.63 million in 2011. Sonic: Lost World only sold 640,000 units, though, in 2013.
While some believe Sonic needs a new image (which I thought was what Sonic Boom was trying to do in the first place), the rest of us simply think Sonic needs good games again to get back on his loop-de-loop laden track. Critics and fans alike notoriously panned Sonic Boom. In fact, it was so bad it found a way into our annual Tobias Bruckner awards for the year’s worst of the worst.
We don’t know what’s ahead for Sonic and the Gang, but clearly adding a fancy scarf and a steroid-injected Knuckles was not the way to go.