Kikizo writes:

"In the not-too-distant past, some pretty convincing claims were made by an alleged former member of Sonic Team staff that the once-adored Sega studio is losing its will to live."

"Sonic Team veteran Tetsu Katano says it's not true that staff inside the studio are becoming disillusioned, and that fresh talent keeps things bright."
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VideoGamer.com writes: "Have you ever wondered why Sonic the Hedgehog can't swim? No, neither had we - but that didn't stop us from stumbling across the answer during a brief-yet-bizarre interview with Yuji Naka."
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Microsoft's Children's Miracle Network Games Bundle is the first package to be launched as part of the company's Family Games initiative. The bundle, which is priced at a "value" price point of less than $30 includes three Xbox 360 games; Viva Pinata Party Animals, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Shrek The Third.

Microsoft will donate 100 percent of its net proceeds from sales of the Family Game Pack to support Children's Miracle Network hospitals, a network of 170 children's hospitals across the United States that treat 17 million sick and injured children every year. Enhance your enjoyment of family game night knowing that the proceeds from your purchase will help other families by allowing children to receive the medical care they need.
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It's the money, stupid. And enough gamers buy crappy Sonic games for Sega not to care, according to an anonymous Sega employee. Boss Rush was an anonymous blog, currently deleted, run by someone who actually turned out to be Sonic Europe employee Ben Andac (who is no longer with the company).
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Itching for a gratis Xbox Live Arcade game? Microsoft is offering one of five titles for free, but you have to follow these three steps:

1. Sign up for 12 months of Xbox Live Gold between now and January 5. It must be done directly through Xbox Live, meaning you can't use that prepaid card your mom or significant other bought you as a gift.

2. Decide what game you want free: Zuma, Marble Blast, Sonic the Hedgehog, Assault Heroes or 3D Ultra Minigolf. Do this step in your head.

3. Download a gamer pic or theme related to the game. Only the first one counts, so make sure you didn't skip Step 2 before downloading a picture of a putter when you're hoping to nab Sonic.

See, folks? Even with digital distribution, TINSTAAFL applies: There is no such thing as a free lunch. Of course, if you were needing to upgrade or renew your subscription anyways, you might as well get something extra out of it.
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Something strange is going on with Sonic Unleashed, better known as Sonic World Adventure in Japan. Instead of coming out on December 18th Sonic Unleashed won't be released on the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 in Japan until spring 2009. The official Sonic World Adventure page explains the extra time will be used to further improve the quality of the game. Meanwhile, the Wii version isn't affected and the Night of the Werehog T-shirt in Sega's Winter campaign is still valid.

But, wait a minute Sonic Unleashed is scheduled to ship on every console under the sun, including the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, next week in North America.

So, is Sega USA going to announce a last minute delay? Or is Sega Japan getting a retooled version of Sonic Unleashed?

Images courtesy of Sega.
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In North America and Europe Sonic Unleashed is exploding on every viable console on the market with a PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, and PlayStation 2 version that Japan isn't getting. Sega of Japan plans to release Sonic: World Adventure (renamed to better fit Sonic's journey around the Earth and downplay the Werehog thing?) only on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii. The PlayStation 2 port will be completed before Sonic: World Adventure launches in Japan so this begs the question why is Sega passing on it? It's not like Sega Japan is abandoning the PlayStation 2 entirely. Thunderforce VI comes out on Thursday in Japan and unless Sega has anything secretly planned it will be the final PlayStation 2 game published by Sega in the region.
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VGChartz reports that this week, Triggerheart Excelica launched to decent numbers. Triggerheart Excelica is the 2nd ever Dreamcast game to come to the XBLA Service, with Rez HD being the first. Excelica beats previous $10 Schmup recordholder, Omega 5's debut of 6,000 units by a decent 20% increase.

However, like Omega 5, it was vastly frontloaded this week: it's debut sales on it's first day was almost 40% of the 3day week (which is rather high). Another major note: Japanese Xbox 360 users made up 40% of the entire Excelica userbase. In the case of Omega 5, it sold only to 14% Japanese users (which is well above the norm, as the JP userbase constitutes maybe 5% of the average XBLA purchase base).

Other notes:

-Sonic the Hedgehog reaches 250,000 Units
-N+ increased very well
-Rez HD finishes it's first month just shy of 100,000 units
-Chessmaster LIVE ends it's first month with almost 28,000 units.
-Poker Smash had a massive drop from last week: it shed 70% from last week. Fortunately, the game has still done very well with grossing $400,000 in 4 weeks.
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Todo Juegos (translated) is reporting that Microsoft is planning a new promotion for Europe. Said promotion should run between November 1st, 2007 until January 31st, 2008. The gist of it is pretty simple. Just get a friend to purchase a new 360 at some point during the promotion, attach a copy of the receipt to a special coupon (PDF link), mail it in, and both you and your friend will receive ten free Xbox Live Arcade games. The games reportedly offered are:

* Sensible World of Soccer
* Sonic the Hedgehog
* Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting
* Bomberman LIVE
* Marble Blast Ultra
* Spyglass Board Games
* Small Arms
* 3D Ultra MiniGolf Adventures
* Assault Heroes
* Zuma Deluxe
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SEGA® of America, Inc. and SEGA® Europe, Ltd. today announced the SEGA Vintage Collection, a new product line that includes enhanced versions of five SEGA classics which will be available for download on Xbox LIVE® Arcade for the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft. SEGA Vintage Collection kicks off today with the launch of Sonic The Hedgehog and an enhanced version of the arcade classic Golden Axe. Three other titles from SEGA's Genesis library will be ready for download shortly thereafter: Streets of Rage 2, Ecco the Dolphin, and Sonic The Hedgehog 2.
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The glitch-ridden game received scathing reviews and disappointing sales. So, Team Sonic leader Yojiro Ogawa what the hell happened?

"The reason why probably ended up with what we see today, involves a lot of reasons. One is that we did want to launch the title around Christmas, and we had the PS3 launch coming up, but we had to develop for Microsoft's 360 at the same time and the team had an awful lot of pressure on them. It was very hard for the team to try and see how we were going to come out with both versions together with just the one team. It was a big challenge."
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If you've bought the latest Sonic game, you'll be glad to hear 3 more levels have been added to the Xbox Live Marketplace. They can be yours for 200 MS points.
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Eight out of the top ten spots are occupied by Xbox 360 game requests. Crackdown is tops for the Xbox 360, Sonic for Nintendo Wii, and Virtua Fighter 5 tops the PS3 list. Anticipation for God of War II for the PS2 bubbles all the way to the 8th position on the cross-platform list.

Read on for the complete list:
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Some decent releases starting to trickle down the pipe now... Xbox 360 and PC gamers have Battlestations: Midway, while the Playstation 3 gets Sonic the Hedgehog.

Check out the latest list of new video game releases (USA) for the week of 1/29/2007 on Xbox 360, Playstation 3 (PS3), Nintendo Wii, Sony PS2, PSP, Nintendo DS, and PC (USA)!
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Here is the list of the latest review scores from Famitsu.

The complete list:

Motorstorm (PS3, Sony): 8 / 8 / 8 / 6 - (30/40)
Sonic The Hedgehog (PS3, Sega): 8 / 7 / 7 / 7 - (29/40)
Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (Xbox 360, Capcom): 9 / 9 / 9 / 9 - (36/40)
Sonic The Hedgehog (Xbox 360, Sega): 8 / 7 / 7 / 8 - (30/40)
Seiken Densetsu 4 (PS2, Square Enix): 7 / 8 / 8 / 7 - (30/40)
Madden NFL 07 (PS2, EA): 7 / 8 / 7 / 5 - (27/40)
Monster 4X4: World Circuit (Wii, Ubisoft): 7 / 6 / 7 / 8 - (28/40)
A Ressha de Ikou HX (Xbox 360, Artdink): 7 / 6 / 7 / 7 - (27/40)
Metal Gear Portable Ops (PSP, Konami): 9 / 10 / 9 / 9 - (37/40)
Tales of The World: Radiant Mythology (PSP, Bandai Namco): 8 / 7 / 8 / 7 - (30/40)
Nounai Aesthe: IQ Suppli DS (NDS, Spike): 7 / 7 / 6 / 6 - (26/40)
Heisei Kyouiku Iinkai DS (NDS, Bandai Namco): 6 / 9 / 7 / 6 - (28/40)
Need for Speed Carbon (PS2, EA): 8 / 8 / 7 / 7 - (30/40)
Need for Speed Carbon (PS3/Xbox 360, EA): 9 / 9 / 8 / 8 - (34/40)
Need for Speed Carbon (Wii, EA): 8 / 7 / 6 / 7 - (28/40)
Need for Speed Carbon (PSP, EA): 8 / 8 / 7 / 8 - (31/40)
School Love! (PS2, Views): 6 / 6 / 6 / 6 - (24/40)
Intelligent License 2 (PSP, Now Production): 7 / 9 / 7 / 8 - (31/40)
NBA Live 07 (PSP, EA): 7 / 8 / 7 / 7 - (29/40)
Hamster to Kurasou (NDS, Interchannel): 6 / 6 / 5 / 5 - (22/40)
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In their latest edition, the Official Xbox Magazine has again rated all new Xbox 360 game that have been released last month. Sonic the Hedgehoc is the only game that scores below average, the other rates are pretty good.

The full list:

Lost Planet (Xbox 360, Capcom): 8,0
Star Trek Legacy (Xbox 360, Bethesda): 8,0
Sonic The Hedgehog (Xbox 360, Sega): 4,5
DOA Xtreme 2 (Xbox 360, Tecmo): 6,5
Viva Pinata (Xbox 360, Microsoft): 8,5
Phantasy Star Universe (Xbox 360, Sega): 6,5
Call of Duty 3 (Xbox 360/Xbox, Activision): 8,0
Superman Returns (Xbox 360, EA): 6,5
Tony Hawks Project 8 (Xbox 360, Activision): 7,5
College Hoops 2K7 (Xbox 360, 2K Sports): 9,0
Roboblitz (Xbox 360 XLA, Microsoft): 8,5
Small Arms (Xbox 360 XLA, Gastronaut Studios): 7,5
Contra (Xbox 360 XLA, Konami): 6,5
Novadrome (Xbox 360 XLA, Stainless Games): 7,0
Defender (Xbox 360 XLA, Midway): 6,5
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There have been no new entries in the UK top ten this week, but considerable movement, as soccer simulation FIFA 07 moves up three places to reclaim the number one spot. The PlayStation 2 version is now outselling Pro Evolution Soccer 6 on PlayStation 2 by a factor of 3:2, while the Xbox 360 version of Konami's title is outselling its FIFA 07 equivalent by the same ratio.

Xbox 360 exclusive Gears of War was the most obvious victim in the shuffle of positions, with sales down by 45 percent on its debut week ¿ although it remains the only single format exclusive in the top ten.

Meanwhile, the newly released PlayStation 2 version of Call of Duty 3 kept the game afloat in the top ten for Activision, while the new Xbox 360 version of movie tie-in Cars did the same for THQ. Girl's toy license Bratz: Forever Diamondz proved to have the best week in the top ten though, with sales up by 45 percent ¿ led by the Nintendo DS version which accounted for 80 percent of all sales for the title.

Outside of the top ten, Nintendogs: Labrador & Friends re-entered as high as number thirteen, making for five Nintendo published titles in the top twenty. The highest new entry though was PlayStation 2 exclusive Guitar Hero II at number sixteen, which sold almost three times more than during its predecessor's debut. Home console movie tie-in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Legend of Jack Sparrow re-entered at number twenty-three, boosted by sales of the DVD release of the movie.

There was no place however for other Christmas titles such as Warhammer: Mark of Chaos from Namco Bandai/Deep Silver, Cricket 07 from Electronic Arts, Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Party Edition from Eidos, Sonic the Hedgehog from Sega or movie tie-in Happy Feet from Midway. Many of these titles stand a good chance of charting in the top forty next week, although others will no doubt be lost in the traditional Christmas rush of new titles.
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Gaming icon celebrates 15th anniversary with first adventure for the next-generation console.

SEGA today announced that Sonic The Hedgehog has shipped in North America for the Xbox 360. Celebrating his 15th anniversary this year, Sonic The Hedgehog brings his fast feet and feisty attitude to new next generation heights in his most intense, high velocity adventure yet. The game will also ship for the PLAYSTATION 3 this holiday season.
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Previous Sonic instalments, Sonic Heroes and Sonic Adventure 2, were criticised for focusing too heavily on multiple characters, the loudest fan cries asking for more Sonic and less shooting/hammering/frog chasing.

Unfortunately though, out of these 12 screenshots we count two with the blue spiky one in them.

Sonic the Hedgehog is out on 360 this Christmas, with a PS3 version arriving alongside the console next year.
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XBOXYDE found this video of Sonic the Hedgehog featuring Silver.
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