PSN, XBLA: Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection Getting Disc Release on PS3 and 360 - The End Of SEGA XBLA Games?
Over on the Gamefly website, a new SKU has popped up onto the Xbox 360 and PS3 - Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection. Care to guess what that is?
Back in July of 2007, the Xbox Live Arcade began to push out a fair few classic Sega games. We got Sonic 1 and 2, Streets of Rage 2, Ecco and Golden Axe. But since then we've seen nothing. SEGA's last effort was an original title - Happy Tree Friends: False Alarm, and not a classic.
Looks like they will be stopping any kind of classic releases. This could be due to many things. There are rumors floating around right now that the Digital Eclipse side of Backbone will be closing down once all their current projects are out the door - notice that we've seen absolutely nothing emulated out of them for a long time now. Their last game on XBLA was Discs of Tron. Companies are now deciding to do their own emulation - with M2 doing the Sega Ages collections in Japan on PS2, SNK Playmore doing their own emulation for Samurai Shodown and Metal Slug, and Konami forgetting about them altogether, and instead pushing out seemingly terrible 'new' games like Frogger 2.
Now this might just end up being an upgraded port of the PS2 game Sega Genesis Collection, which Backbone / Digital Eclipse have also been working on, or this might be the first step on having M2 finally start doing emulation on a HD console.
In the end it will be a better decision for the consumers who want a huge amount of classic Sega titles for a much lower price. Still, it has been great to have the convenience of the Xbox Live Arcade, to just be on your hard drive and play whenever you want, and have some expanded features, like the Streets of Rage 2 online play. I wrote this article sometime ago about what I'd love to see for an XBLA version of Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and ideas like level time leaderboards cannot happen if it's nothing more than a ton of ROM dumps on a disc.
I guess we'll have to see. Maybe Sega might start making ports on great games they made later on - like the PS2 versions of Virtual On and NiGHTS Into Dreams.
Comments
I remember a while back that there were some stories about MS wanting to slow down the arcade releases on XBLA... I think back on xblah you had one about a shmup that ran into that issue.
This might back some of that up, but who knows considering Samurai Showdown II came out recently.
I guess SEGA could fix these up to have leaderboards and online play, but the more games wind up on the disc the less likely that'll be.
Posted by: Tony | September 22, 2008 10:56 PM
Haven't they released these games enough already? Thanks but no thanks, I still have the Sonic and Genesis Collections.
They really should move on to Saturn and Dreamcast era with these Collections. There never was a game more deserving of a re-release than Panzer Dragoon Saga.
Posted by: Anonymous | September 22, 2008 11:32 PM
SEGA has only release Ecco the Dolphin, Sonic the HedgeHog, and Streets of Rage 2, IIRC.
These games are selling decently well on Virtual Console, and I think with a bit more focus these games can do well on XBLA.
First off the games need higher quality filtering for the "HD visual" setting. Secondly, there needs to be better support for leaderboards. Every level for Sonic should have a time leaderboard, points leaderboard, and time + points leaderboard. Despite owning many copies of Sonic 1, I would buy it yet again if it had that.
Secondly, SEGA should consider releasing these in packs, even if for XBLA. 1600 pts for all Sonic titles, I'd go for that. But maybe not everyone else, at the very least it should be looked into as an option.
Now, those are console games, SEGA has a goldmine in the arcade front. From Virtua Fighter to Daytona to Virtual On to Desert Tank, SEGA should look at creating a stable Model 1 and 2 emulator for the 360/PS3. Add in online play support and leaderboards, and you are set. That way they just have to pop in a rom, tweak and test the online play (AFAIK the code in the arcade versions assume a high speed LAN connection, so it may take some tweaking) and sell them.
A game like Crazy Taxi has already been ported to the Xbox...why not use the same Xbox emulator to have it as an XBLA release with Achievements and leaderboards?
There is so much potential in terms of games, but not only that, there is potential that there are low cost solutions to bring these games to XBLA. With a bit of focus, these old games can turn into added revenue for SEGA.
Posted by: nrXic | September 23, 2008 6:56 AM