Well how else can they care more?
Well, let's see...
Sonic 4 is a game that should have, by all means, been an easy knock out of the park. You mention "Sonic 4" and you immediately draw comparisons to the original 16-bit anthology, and the good memories inspired by that much. For all that set-up, all Sega had to do was knock the pins down. The build up to the reveal of Sonic 4 footage (including appearances by PR manager, Mr. "Sonic-Cycle-is-dead" Ruby Eclipse) should have been able to do what the CG "proof of concept" posted above did, only more so, because of all the "hype" they were trying to generate.
Gee, what a surprise when they didn't do as such.
Then came the "leaking". I liked how some people, throughout the whole ordeal, actually wanted to say things to the effect of "Oh, poor Sega~!" and the like. Whatever, if the game was truly well made, a leak would have only served to be little more than FREE advertising for the game amongst the hardcore base that followed such exploits. Instead, it did anything but that.
So now, the name of the game is trying to go with this faux-apologetic "We're gonna get it right this time, we PROMISE~!" thing. I guess that's the new tag-line of choice, seeing how "We're taking him back to his ROOTS~!" has exhausted itself of all meaning. But you can bet that if the leak didn't happen, we would have gotten Sonic 4 as is (or was). The only thing that separates the more recent Sonic 4 episode of earlier this year from the 2006 disaster, is that, of course, Sega ALREADY made their money off of the latter. Here they were caught with their pants down before release, and they were left with either the choice to shape it up a bit to try and fix some of the glaring faults people saw through the leak, or just "quietly cancel" the title. Obviously, Iizuka and co. were still interested in the idea of trying to make money, so there you go.
But in the end, again, there's little to showcase that they actually "care". If they actually cared, things would have been different starting from the moment that "Sonic 4: Episode 1" was revealed. They had their "big chance" to show that they were turning over a new leaf, and they're likely never going to get such a thing again.
I think Ben's problem lies more with the physics of Sonic 4, rather than the artwork. From what I've seen regarding the reactions towards this video, people are upset not because the artwork is so beautiful compared to Sonic 4, but more because the guy who made this pretty much captured the correct physics pretty well.
That's just my guess anyway.
EXACTLY. I mean, the concept vid definitely is beautiful, but it's the way that the vid does more to showcase the kind of things that we should want to see from a game that calls itself "Sonic 4". The momentum is there. The level design is there. The reliance on an unnecessary game play element for this type of game (re: Homing Attack) is NOT there.
I hope Sega keeps on getting hammered with emails relating to this vid. If that's what it takes for them to finally take a hint...!
