For hardcore SEGA fans 2008 was another year, another mediocre Sonic release with Sonic Unleashed. SEGA says the quality will improve but, alas, it will take time.

SEGA of America's VP of marketing, Sean Ratcliffe, told IndustryGamers, “The quality is something that will be fixed over time. It's not something where you wake up one morning and say, 'You know what, we're going to improve our quality on this franchise,' and it magically happens. A lot of hard work goes into striving for quality."

He went on to note that younger players responded well to the slower, Werehog element of Sonic Unleashed, while "older, die-hard SEGA fans" enjoyed the faster daytime levels that were more reminiscent of the Sonic of old. The crustier lot, however, were more critical of the Werehog stuff.

Ratcliffe went on, "Given that it takes a couple of years to make some of these games, it's not surprising that we're not going to see the effort that's being put in over the past 12 months until another 6-12 months.” Presumably he's not referring to Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing or Mario & Sonic at The Olympic Winter Games, given that they're not 'proper' Sonic games, so we'll presumably see a new Sonic platformer in a year or so.

Ratcliffe also noted that, for the die-hard fans, there's always digital distribution for more traditional sidescrolling games. "...That's a big part of our strategy, in terms of taking classic IP and making it available digitally, rather than spend a huge amount of money trying to re-imagine that IP on 360 and PS3; there's a lot more financial risk attached to that”, he said.