 Hey everyone, welcome back to Nintendo Prime and we have to talk about Sonic Frontiers. I didn't think we'd be talking about that to start Pokemon Week, a Scarlet and Violet come out this Friday, but some stuff happened over the weekend that I can't ignore and it kinda goes back to building that mistrust many consumers have in both Sega and in particular their Sonic team. Even though the Sonic team has made some pretty solid games. And if I'm honest, I actually really enjoy Sonic Frontiers even on Switch, even with the performance issues, the blurriness and all that, the poppin' that's the worst on the Switch version, I get it. But they said something over the weekend, the director of the game said something about this being a global play test and I'm not exaggerating. These are his own words, the director of the game. Remember, Sonic Frontiers is a game that both the director, producer and CEO of Sega said we cannot and will not delay this game. It is the most polished Sonic game of all time. You just need to play this game and by the way, it is going to be the most highly reviewed Sonic game of all time. It's not any of those things, but it does kinda seem like Sonic Frontiers might have needed a little bit more time in the oven. Not that what's there isn't good, but when you got the director coming out calling it a global play test, that's a problem when you're charging 60, sometimes $70 for your game. Let's get into exactly what the director of Sonic Frontiers said over on Twitter. So Mori Kishimoto posted a tweet on Friday in which he stated that the Sonic team was studying the feedback from players and critics and taking that into account. Kishimoto also likened Sonic Frontiers to release as a global play test suggesting he doesn't consider the game's release to be the end of the story. So here are the exact quotes. I'm sorry I haven't contacted you until now because we've been busy since the release date of Sonic Frontiers. I'm relieved that the release date has arrived and that the game seems to have reached everyone safely. We are checking out the opinions of critics and players and as you have pointed out, there are still areas where we are not quite there yet and we will take this seriously like a global play test. Now, it's a bit weird because earlier tweets before this one said things like this would change the Sonic game forever and that this was a major milestone in the long history of Sonic games. So essentially, before he bothered to read all the critics and fan feedback, they were thinking that this was gonna be the biggest deal in Sonic history. Instead, it's still a okay game, good game for some, maybe even a great game for a select few, but for the most part, this is not the game that was promised. We were promised essentially a bug-free game. I've even ran into some bugs, some glitching out on walls and stuff like this that just can't happen when you're moving at the speeds you're doing. It really takes you out of the game. I even got stuck in a wall once. Again, this kind of stuff can't happen in a game that gives you the freedom of movement that Sonic Frontiers does. And yeah, the pop-ins have obviously been an issue. You know, this whole, oh, the Sonic engine is the greatest thing that ever happened. We were working on this engine for 10 years and this engine was never built for a Sonic game like this. Clearly was the wrong choice, even just going with Unreal Engine 4 probably would have been better than dealing with this. But if you remember before the game came out, they said how they didn't want this game compared to Breath of the Wild because they're fundamentally different games. That's more of an RPG. We're not that except you collect things, you get experience points, you level up, you literally have progression trees and stuff like that. By the way, progression trees aren't even part of Breath of the Wild. So look, I don't understand why they were not willing to have this compared to Breath of the Wild, except in one key aspect and that is Breath of the Wild was really polished. It had problems, a little bit of frame rates in a couple of places, but it was a very polished game for how big it is and the Sonic Frontiers doesn't feel quite as polished. So I guess you could argue that's the reason you don't want to compare them. Also, you know, who wants to be, you know, when you're targeting super high review scores and you're trying to make this the definitive Sonic game, who wants to be compared to one of the greatest games of all time? When you know your product isn't going to live up to those standards, even though you were telling everyone that it will, and you repeatedly told everyone, we are not delaying this game, we're not delaying this game, this game doesn't need to be delayed, this game is perfect, it's the best, it's the best, it's the best. Perfect, perfect, perfect, it's perfect! Don't you love Sonic Frontiers? It's the greatest Sonic game ever! Okay, look. All hyperbole aside, it is disappointing that Sonic Frontiers is not quite the game, but they tried to hype it up to be. They wanted this to be the definitive Sonic game, the best Sonic game ever. The Sonic game that was going to change the future of their stuff. And they did put a number of years of development into the game. Unfortunately, it's very hard to achieve the heights that they were aiming for if they're not willing to put in the work necessary to do it, and what do I mean by that? Well, when you look at Breath of the Wild, the game they don't want me to compare it to, they built an entirely new engine from the ground up to achieve what they wanted to achieve in that, instead of trying to adopt an older engine to do the things that happened in Breath of the Wild. Sonic Frontiers, and the way that it works, is so fundamentally different from all prior Sonic games that maybe using an engine that was never built to do the things they're doing in Sonic Frontiers was a bad choice in the first place, and they should have either one used a pre-established engine, such as Unreal Engine, that already is set up for games like this, or built an entirely new engine from the ground up that's specifically for Sonic Frontiers, and that would have added probably years of development to the game. Obviously, when talking about, oh, you know, their whole attitude around the game, how like, don't you dare compare us to Breath of the Wild? We are not a Breath of the Wild. We're beyond a Breath of the Wild, essentially. Don't you dare tell us to delay our game. Look at the fan feedback. When they got to play vertical slices that were really, really fun. The fan feed, they played it for six hours. It was the same part of the game for six hours, but they played it for six hours, and they loved it. Look, Sonic Frontiers is not the worst game ever. We're not talking about a, I don't know, not even an old, you know, Sonic game. Like, we're not even talking about it being as bad as Sonic Boom or something like that. We're not talking about this being a Superman 64 situation. Sonic Frontiers to me is quite enjoyable, but they hyped this to be something that it's not, and then refused to accept responsibility until now, and then in accepting responsibility, the director of the game is telling you that this is a global pay test that we all played 60, 70. Mike Odyssey paid $120 to play what they're calling a global play test. If that's not an insult to your consumers, then I don't know what is. Anyways, I wanna know what you guys think about this down in the comments below, because I'm just, I'm baffled. So baffled, in fact, that I forgot to mention Ewin Racing. Ewin Racing has partnered with our channel. If you wanna get 20% off their products, use code Nintendo Prime down in the description. All right guys, thank you so much for tuning in. I am Nathan DeRovell Jance, and I'll catch you guys in the next video.