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Big Red Button CEO Talks About Sonic Boom

If you’re a Sonic fan then you might want to head on over to Polygon as the site has written up an informative piece about the spiky blue hedgehog. Big Red Button CEO Bob Rafei admits that the reception to the Wii U title Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric wasn’t what the company had expected and he admits that it “failed to perform.” Whether this is from a retail standpoint or a technical standpoint remains unknown, but we know that they failed on both parts. In fact, Rafei claims that they almost closed the studio due to the game’s reception which isn’t too surprising. Be sure to check out the full piece, here.

“Unfortunately, the reception to Rise of Lyric was not as strong as we would have hoped. This industry really is punishing if you don’t have a product that performs well. We nearly closed the studio.”

“The goal of the Sonic Boom brand was to make Sonic a bit more [well rounded] and to increase the other characters’ personalities,” Rafei says. He explains SEGA and Big Red Button came together as different entities to “really define what the Sonic brand was about” and to create a “consistent vision” for how the character would interact with a strong supporting cast. This is something he is proud of.

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14 thoughts on “Big Red Button CEO Talks About Sonic Boom”

  1. “increase the other characters’ personalities”

    Yeah because making Knuckles a two-dimensional moronic comedy relief is totally quality character development.

  2. |||Nintendo Dark Commander Quadraxis-NX Prime|||

    -||The only thing you managed to do is to undefine everything Sonic and the rest were about||-

    -||Close your base and go home||-

  3. Well, the cartoon’s enjoyable. Guess I’ll just keep watching that and try to forget it was ever a game in the first place.

  4. I think they aimed a bit too much for characters’ personalities, in fact so much that every other aspect of the games is terrible. Even then, the personalities seem rather annoying and childish.

  5. “The goal of the Sonic Boom brand was to make Sonic a bit more [well rounded] and to increase the other characters’ personalities,”

    ““really define what the Sonic brand was about”

    And you failed horribly, at both. Especially the latter, both the games and the TV show are as un-Sonic as you can get.

  6. Sonic Bum is easily the worst shit that was ever dumped on the Sonic franchise since Sonic 06. The less we talk about it, the better.

  7. ~*Let the shackles be released!*~ Chains of Lucifer X3 ~*Or fall forever!*~

    ~*Sonic Boom is to Sonic as Other M is to Metroid. Only difference is Other M wasn’t a fucking glitchy, bug filled mess & could actually be enjoyed if you mute the TV during cutscenes. It’s actually unfair for us to put all the blame on Big Red Button since Sega didn’t help matters by not giving them longer development time, though. Just like it’s unfair to blame Team Ninja for Other M’s bad character portrayals when they only did the gameplay whereas a Nintendo developer (Yoshio Sakamoto aka Metroid’s George Lucas) was in charge of the story. Same with blaming some of the actors for the bad character portrayals in the prequel trilogy of Star Wars. Am I missing anything that gets wrongly blamed?*~

  8. Pingback: Big Red Button CEO says the Studio Almost Closed Down After Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric - PlayerEssence

    1. Sonic fans are not impossible to please- Sonic Boom was just flat-out bad in every aspect. I like Sonic but I cannot like the trainwreck that is Rise of Lyric. The cardinal sin was that Sonic barely ever did the one thing he is known for, and that is running at high speed, but then when he did it wasn’t done well. That’s like making a mainline Mario game where he almost never jumps but when he does he bounces around uncontrollably and it’s frustrating for the player.

  9. Pingback: Sonic The Hedgehog Movie Confirmed For 2018 – My Nintendo News

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