In a recent interview with VG247, SEGA West CEO Mike Hayes revealed that digital download title Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 has sold over one million units across all platforms since its release in October last year.
“It did very well and it continues to do well,” Hayes told us in a phone interview this afternoon.
“Particularly when it gets a little shot in the arm with some promotion or some price activity, sales are quite phenomenal. Its downloaded clearly over a million units, so its sold particularly well and continues to sell.”
Hayes also told the website to expect information on Episode 2 “very soon”, but wouldn’t clarify how soon. Instead Mr.Hayes just said “look out for that one.”
Source: VG247 (via GoNintendo)
Thanks to SSMB member Emeraio at the SSMB for the heads up!
Whoa sweet!
This came out of nowhere
Im more excited for this than generations in a sick way.
Heh! This is good news! I am excited to see how Episode 2 will look and play! Hopefully, we get some all new stages instead of stages based on pre-existing ones like those from Sonic 1 and 2.
Hopefully Sonic 4: Episode II will take a hint from the far superior feedback of Generations’ classic gameplay and work it to handle more like its retail successor.
Well part of how good Classic Sonic is in Generations was helped by the feback of Sonic 4 episode 1. So let’s be glad for that. And hopefully ep 2 will build from this. Tho I get the feeling it’ll build more from the 3DS version. And while the 3DS version is inferior and ppl are bashing it to all ends, it’s not as bad as ppl say and ppl who played it don’t seem to mind so much. And I will imagine ep 2 won’t be as good as generations or may be merely similar but it will most likely get better each ep. This is just a guess. xD
Generations has classic gameplay?
What a shame. That would be funny if you were a troll.
I think he already is a troll.
I’m not sure whether to laugh with you or shake my head in disappointment that they STILL aren’t getting the Retro formula right.
Woah Greg, when did you start coming to this site? Lol.
Also, we don’t know if SEGA is getting the formula right for Ep.2. Generations is fantastic, not perfect, still I can’t complain 😛
I wouldn’t count on the physics making a major change though. Wbu Greg?
Sweet! Can’t wait! If the November 1-4 date for Gen. is true, then I expect Ep.2 news in late October, because that’ll be the time Gen. Is almost out, and would give SEGA the perfect oppurtunity to hype up fans with a new Sonic game 🙂
And congrats to S4EP1 getting 1 million! I hope Ep. 2 sells even more. I’m not sure if I’m right, but didn’t the Original Sonic the Hedgehog sell 6 million copies?
The only thing I’m worried about is the sales for Ep2. What if it does bad, due to the fact of Ep.1 making many fans dissapointed? Hmm, I just hope #2 does really well! I also bet that more people would’ve bought Ep1 if they had internet. I know a ton of people that don’t have internet on their ps3’s and xbox’s, that wish they could’ve bought the game. Oh well, when SEGA is done making all of the Episodes, then SEGA will put all of them in a disc, and we will get the FULL Sonic 4. 🙂 Its gonna be one long hell of a game, that will most likely be longer than Sonic3&K!
I don’t have Xbox Live and I got it by taking my hard drive to a friend’s house. XD But I guess ppl with no internet also would never have known about Sonic 4 anyways. And while some ppl might not buy ep 2 cuz of ep 1, others haven’t played ep 1 and are waiting for the release of all eps. Some liked ep 1 and will buy ep 2, like myself. Some disliked ep 1 and are gonna buy ep 2 to see if it improves! And some may not buy it at first but will later be convinced by those who’ve played it if they say it’s a lot better!
While I think ep 2 will build from Generations feedback, they may also build from their own feedback as there WAS a feedback session for Sonic 4 to help with ep 2. This I expect to stay will be the uncurling and such. But things like the rolling and the momentum will probably be improved due to them being able to build completely new levels (as it’s hard to improve some physics due to the levels already being built.) I don’t think it’ll be perfected but merely improved.
If you can get past the physics anyways then you’re mostly worried about the content of ep 2. See the stages ARE original but similar to past stages, but that’s what Sonic does. We’ve got multiple casino/carnival type stages, mech-cities and tropic first stages. But Sonic 4’s was just really similar to specific ones. Not exactly like them but similar. The reason is to help them get a grasp of the “retro styled enviroment” while the following eps will “introduce something new”. Same with the robots. The reused machines such as badniks and Eggmobile bosses are part of the story. Eggman is ruined and rebuilt his old stuff. This throws off Sonic (the player) into thinking it’s the same as before but there’s a twist. Each robot and boss has at least 1 new catch/ability. This will eventually lure Sonic into his deadly trap. And since this is after Sonic 3 & Knuckles, then you can assume after Sonic teamed up with the other 2 anthros they all went to their homes and this is why Sonic is alone. But likely they will all come together again and this game will probably be how Team Sonic was “officially” formed as a permanent alliance against Eggman. =p
Sorry for the long comment. xD
I don’t have Xbox Live either. Thanks to that I only have the trial version of Sonic 4. FoxBoy, is that yours to?
Because if it’s the full version you own, I would like to ask you what did your friend do.
Well basically we discovered that you’re offered a free GOLD Xbox Live Account for the first 30 days and after that your account becomes a Silver account unless you start paying for it.
To make an account, I just needed an email account to go with it. I made one-use-only email account specifically for this purpose.
I don’t have Xbox Live but my friend does. He only has a Silver Account tho.
So I put my hard drive on his 360, got on his Xbox Live and used the email I made to create a free trial of Gold Account. I then used the card I bought to buy the game and downloaded it to my hard drive.
I took the hard drive back home and played it on my 360 that has no Xbox Live.
The only reason I don’t have Live is because I don’t have an extra ethernet cable to connect the internet to my 360 instead of my computer. My friends does.
Tho this is what I did to download trials. For some reason I had to take my whole 360 and hook it up to Live at his house in order to download the actual game. Can’t remember why. XD But since you have a 360 and were able to download the trial yourself, all you need to do is make a one-time email address to make a free trial Gold Account and download the game. XD (This is also the method we used to download the Sonic Generations demo right away, since Silver accounts wouldn’t get it til a week later. XD) This can be done over and over, just each time it’s a new profile so you can’t really build up anything on them. =P
And this may not be the only or the best method but it was the first thing we thought of and as people who don’t do the whole hacking deal, this was just easier for us to deal with. X)
I bought my 360 back in February. My 360 came with the ixtreme LT firmware installed, which let’s me download any full game I want, as long as it’s PAL or Region Free, by burning them in a DVD.
But I don’t have such luck with Xbox Live Arcade games. Since they come in a different format it’s a different process: I have a program called XBLA Thief. It shows a list of “available-for-download-right-now” XBLA games. Sonic 4 is among that list, but it requires a modded XBLA profile to play the full version. The modded profile comes in a winrar file along with the game.
Since I bought a USB cable to connect the 360 hard drive to my PC, by using a program called Xport 360 (there are others), I just transfer the data of the game and the profile to my hard drive. But to make it work I must have a XBLA profile of my own, which I don’t because, like you, I don’t have the ethernet cable to connect to Xbox Live.
Since I don’t have a profile, I am only allowed to play the trial version. I could just buy the ethernet cable and connect to Xbox Live, but since my 360 is hacked, I’m a little afraid to do it because if the XBLA administration discovers that I own a firmware in my 360, they erase everything, including the firmware, like it happened to a friend of mine.
That method you described might work, but I don’t know anyone who owns a xbox 360 with xbla connection.
By the way, thanks to my cable (and maybe the firmware), I got the Generations demo playable to this day.
Hopefully they’ll take the feedback from that interview thing last year. I really just want to see tails and knuckles playable (and the momentum tweeked)
Still wondering how Metal Sonic is gonna fit into the story without it sliding too far into the “CD” area.
And btw guys, I wouldn’t get your hopes up on SEGA changing the physics to make them look like the original…I think SEGA will just tweak the physics or something. I could be wrong, but just saying, if I were you guys, I wouldn’t count on the physics completely changing.
To be honest, I could wait more then a year for 2 to come out now that we have Generations but i’ll probably change my mind once I see footage for it XD
To be honest, after playing Sonic 4 I can see why ppl complained even if it doesn’t bother me as much as them. I just don’t see how they can hate it so badly they act like it’s the new Sonic 06.
“tweaking” the physics is really all they need to do. Cuz after thinking about it just now, I’m not really sure what’s all that wrong with Sonic 4. I mean the only real bad thing is the uncurling, and as much as I dislike it and think it looks funny, I can deal with it. If they don’t fix that, what else is there for me to complain about?
The rolling? It wasn’t that bad nor that much a difference. A mild tweak is all they need. They couldn’t do so before cuz levels were already built but with new levels being made they CAN do it. But it won’t make that much of a difference. I mild one, but not enough to be a drastic improvement.
So what? The momentum while jumping? I mean sure if you let go in mid-air you just drop but if you held the direction you wanted to go then you’d keep going that way. If they made it where momentum would do that on it’s own, again, mild improvement but nothing extremely drastic.
So fix both of those and really what’s left? Make Sonic’s run a bit faster? Sure I’d enjoy that. I’m all for that. Still not a big change tho. IF they could and would make all 3 of these changes I would support it all the way. And I would see a noticable improvement, just not a drastic one. I guess if they did that and fixed uncurling then it’d be a mild improvement and rid the game of anything I can think about being legitimately reasonable to complain over.
I’m not saying this to insult Sonic 4 haters or anything or to defend the game. I’m serious here. I really can’t think of all that much to fix… OHHH WAIT! The wall sticking. Fix THAT too and then it’ all good right? =p
Still, it’s a noticable change but not a big enough change between “great” and “pile of crap”. So either Sonic 4 isn’t bad enough to be a “pile of crap” or the classics aren’t good enough to be “great” other than personal preference of nitpicky tones (which is cool, we’ve all got’em XD)
According to Aaron at Comic-Con : No Episode 2 until Generations is over and done with – They are aware of the physics issues – Most likely a 2012 release
That’s technically very soon tho. When we first heard about Generations we thought it’d be a 7 – 8 and a half month wait. Now it’s only 2 and a half months. XD
Same here. Its just 10 weeks left if you think about it.
To be more precise, if it’s on November 1st for sure then it’s 11weeks an 3 days BUT THAT’S NOT REALLY MUCH LONGER ANYWAYS! =D LOL XDD
Hey Sega, do yourselves a favor and ignore the fans this time XD no matter what, they’re always gonna find something to whine about.
They’re also the ones who inspire the things they whine about. X)
They asked for shooting in Sonic but SEGA felt it unfitting. To incorporate it, they made Gamma in Sonic Adventure and Eggman’s gameplay in SA2 (which Tails shared due to adding him, Shadow and Rouge later. They had to use the same gameplay as the 3 characters already there). This is also what ended up making Shadow’s game the way it was. Yup, it could’ve been regular gameplay. XD
The sword thing and the WereHog thing I’ve already seen plenty of fanart for since SA1 was released. A decade before Unleashed and Black Knight were conceived.
The fans asked for more characters so they got it. Then they asked for just Sonic and since Secret Rings they’ve been getting that. Personally, I preferred the friends thing cuz it allows for variety and plus it makes no sense to travel the world and not meet new ppl. Some of which stay your friends a long time, some who you only see once and then they come back occassionally and some who you only see once and never again. xD It also helps for plot.
The fans asked for something less realistic. Starting with Sonic Heroes excluding Sonic 06, that’s what we’ve been getting.
Sonic fans wanted Sonic to go back to it’s roots and so SEGA’s been doing that, making new gameplay that goes back to Sonic’s roots particularly starting with Unleashed having 2D sections and a lot more 2D styled platforming (even in 3D sections). But fans didn’t consider it as platforing since there weren’t multiple paths and didn’t like 2D -styled gameplay in a 3D sections cuz they wanted to explore not just go left and right. So Colors and Generations are showing the results of this.
SEGA has been listening but it’s not always a good idea. XD Sometimes it is, but sometimes fans are just being crazy. X) And SEGA isn’t gonna make them exactly like the originals we need something “fresh” and they’re trying to compromise. The fans think that’s stupid. =P
There are too many different kinds of Sonic fans who all want different things. :/
This is true. XD It’s a shame too cuz often the minority are the ones to complain and they are the ones to voice their opinions due to being the only ones to have something to complain about. This ends up making them seen like the majority.
See, when the majority is satisfied, yeah we can say this is cool and tell whiners to shut it but in the end we can’t rant on how good a game is! When ppl have a problem with something, they complain, they whine, they want something to change, something to be done. But for those of us who are happy with it, we’re satisfied and don’t need anything to change, don’t need anything to be done. So we don’t do anything. But the complainers do. This is why they seem like the majority, because they’re the only ones you see express their opinions as much as you do.
When one side is pleased, another is displeased and changes it, then the original side is displeased and they change it, and the pattern repeats. This is why it appears as if fans keep chainging their minds. It’s a tough situation really. XD
(Sorry for double post, THIS is where this comment was supposed to go! >.>)
About damn time…
Do want Tails and Knux playable. And you know what I want? To have option for Tails to follow you and after finishing all stories and getting emeralds we will have SUPER SONIC BATTLE!!!
But I dont think we should give Tails and Knux super forms. We can but later we need to make it uncanon. I mean we have 4 chars. with ability to go Super we dont need more.
I want this, I want that. Almost every one of those ideas are not important.
I’ve a better one.
I want it to be fun. Simple. Anything else can be considered a bonus.
For me episode 1 was fun. Episode 2 will probably be fun too. I just post what I would like to see.
@Hunter- I’ve been wondering if Tails and Knuckles(if knux is playable) will get super forms. Maybe they won’t. Maybe Tails will just be glowing or something, idk 😛
And SEGA if your reading this, remember that this is Sonic 4, Not Sonic 2! If Tails is the only playable character, I’ll get pretty upset. Sonic 4 should’ve had Tails and Knux playable in the first place! Remember SEGA that this is Sonic 4, not a backflash to Sonic 1 and 2. Episode 1 should not have felt like Sonic 1, with Sonic being the only character. Please do not have Episode 2 feel like Sonic 2, with only Tails :/ Make it feel like S3&K, and possibly add more characters if you wish. (It would be so cool if you could play as Metal Sonic!
Honestly, I think that just over 1 million is abit poor for a “premier” Sonic game, especially a game tilted “Sonic 4” which was available on all main home platforms. Then again maybe is cuz its was download-only.
Every since Sonic Gen was announced I haven’t even though about Ep 2. Unless it really hits it outta the park, I wont be getting the game. But the game does have Metal Sonic!!
Yeah, I did expect more than 1 million myself across 5 platforms, which includes the Windows Phone version released a month or so ago. They even made it more accessible in the US with those cards with the redemption codes on. Mike Hayes doesn’t say “just over 1 million” by the way, he says “clearly over a million”, so it could be closer to 2 million, but I still expected more. As you say though, it could be because it’s download-only. There’s probably still millions of gamers out there who don’t have the internet.
I actually like the idea of basing the zones of previous ones, Maybe Sonic 1 and 2 Were not the best choices but they were good for episode one. I’m actually pretty excited to see the ones they base of Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles.. Who knows if Metal Sonic has anything to do with it though it may be Sonic CD inspired zones and then Episode 3 will have Sonic 3 And Knuckles inspired stages…
SEGA won’t be inspiring zones anymore. That was only for Ep1. unless they’re either lazy or ran out of original ideas.
It’s about time! I was wondering when Ep. 2 was coming.
Hopefully there won’t be another “try and upload your best times in the time trail achievement, but get it before a hacker cheats and get all 9’s, so SEGA wipes out everyone’s hard work and makes getting that achievement an impossibility” incident. Just sayin’…
Episode 2 is actually on the way? i thought it was gonna do another Sonic 3 & Knuckles-Sonic 4 on us
http://au.xbox360.ign.com/articles/117/1179437p1.html
Must read.
>First with Sonic 4: Episode 1, and soon to be followed by Sonic Generations, it seems SEGA has heard our cries for more of the old Sonic, and less of the new.
PFFFFFFFFT, stopped reading right there or my rage would have been swift. I have to remember, can’t spell ignorant without IGN.
Do they mean normal “very soon” or “very soon…… Valve time”?
God, I hope it isn’t valve time, it has been 3 years(?) since HL2 Ep2, HL2 Ep3 or HL3 hasn’t even been announced yet!
I heard they’ve cancelled it from someone, though it’s just rumour. Half Life 3 maybe? =/
been wondering what happened to Episode 2. Almost looked to be leaving us on a cliff hanger like Sonic Chronicles =(
Good to see Ep. 1 doing so well =D
cant wait to see how ep. 2 look.
This is true. XD It’s a shame too cuz often the minority are the ones to complain and they are the ones to voice their opinions due to being the only ones to have something to complain about. This ends up making them seen like the majority.
See, when the majority is satisfied, yeah we can say this is cool and tell whiners to shut it but in the end we can’t rant on how good a game is! When ppl have a problem with something, they complain, they whine, they want something to change, something to be done. But for those of us who are happy with it, we’re satisfied and don’t need anything to change, don’t need anything to be done. So we don’t do anything. But the complainers do. This is why they seem like the majority, because they’re the only ones you see express their opinions as much as you do.
When one side is pleased, another is displeased and changes it, then the original side is displeased and they change it, and the pattern repeats. This is why it appears as if fans keep chainging their minds. It’s a tough situation really. XD
sigh someone mentioned Sonic Chronicles…… I so want a sequel to that, unless Jazwares can make SHADE, OMEGA, ROUGE, THE NOCTURNE CLAN/ARMY, ALIEN FRIENDS in the 3inch line then I can continue the story myself, but Seriously one day we’ll get an official answer, i mean it wasnt rated badly Gamesmaster’s recent brilliant 20th anniversay book hails it as one of Sonic’s greatest games, even ONM UK rated it extremely high as well
In Gamemasters they used the wrong bloody screen shots, from the world ends with you =O shocking.
If they were to make a sequel, which I hope they do! I doubt it will be made by Bioware, now they are part of EA. I think EA and either Sega/Nintendo don’t get along or something…I’m sure i read that somewhere…or something similar…
That would be me that mentioned it. Or at least I think I’m the one your referring to
I mentioned it too.
when. What news thing
A couple posts up.
Anyhow, I hope they have more creative levels, I thought the Lost Labyrinth with the torch was a nice touch, even if some of the puzzles were difficult in that level first time round.
Unlikely, but I’d like to see one or two “new” Badniks thrown into the mix, I’m kind of tired with the over use of buzz bombers and moto-bugs that are being used over and over now.
Sonic Generations release date is November 30th in the UK currently.
@Kaoz: If EA don’t get along with SEGA/Nintendo, why would John Riccitello be the only third-party publisher head to appear on-stage at Nintendo’s E3 conference detailing EA’s support for the Wii-U.
I’m only saying what I read about a while back while looking through some of the Bioware forums, don’t take my word as gospel.
You Guys Think Sonic 4: Episode 2 Is “Real” Not “Fake”!!!!!
sonic 4 ep. 2 hooray metal sonic
it would be cool if in episode 2 that tails and Knux were playable and that you could connect ep1 and ep2 and have tails and knux in ep1 levels
I have a feeling it’ll work like that, only Tails will be in ep.2 and Knuckles in ep.3
Just got info from Woun from Russia Sonic Scene. We have reliable source that PSVita ver. Of Sonic Generations is planned for 2012 relase!!!! Look here http://scene.sonicth.ru/?p=1598
Ok so they somewhat announce it for psvita. WHERE’S TEH PC!? and the sega blogs are back just to let you know…. and what were you doing on a Russian website. Well I guess you do live somewhat close to it. closer than I am
woo! Sonic 4 Ep 2? Huzzah! all they gotta do is tweek the physics a tiny bit, add tails and or knuckles, a few more zones and update the ones from ep1….and maybe as a little bonus make Metal Sonic Playable? it doesn’t have to be cannon or anything just as a cool bonus for beating the game or something.