Xbox could be Sonic's Home... couldn't it?

So, do you ever wake up and your first thought is "wait a minute why Xbox can basically be considered Sonic's home why is this a thing why am I thinking about this I should think about what I will eat for breakfast???"

You´re not alone, happens to me quite a lot

And it´s true, despite most people definitely seeing Xbox as the least possible place to be called Sonic's "home", it very well might be

Un-officially, but it very well might be

There's a lot of technicalities here, but it's fair, and I don't believe it would change

First

Why am I saying that Xbox could be considered the home of this Hedgehog?

Well, I think I can explain this easily, look at this image I did showcasing why:

(in case you don't understand, look at the amount of Sonic games currently available in each platform, there's a pattern for two of the three)

((Yes I'm counting Superstars early I don't see why I shouldn't))

Yep, it's kinda cheating but games are games

Most of the Xbox 360 Sonic games are available in the current generation via Xbox' Backwards Compatibility program

Something you can NOT say about the other platforms

But, yes I know, and again, another technicality

Yes, Playstation has or had the PS3 Sonic games, but it was in Playstation Now, cloud gaming, this is actually cheating unlike the situation in Xbox for these games

And it's not only that, but first, it's the same catalog that Xbox has, and second, since the Now debranding and incorporation of the new Playstation Plus memberships there's no Sonic game available right now, and that includes those PS3 Streaming-only games

Also, yes, I also know about the enhancements the games got in Xbox, but we'll touch that later

So, results leave it clear

Xbox currently has the biggest amount of games available right now

Unless Sega decides to re-release Sonic Adventure 1&2, Unleashed, Generations, and Sonic 4 Episode 1&2 in modern platforms (let's be real, they're not porting Sonic 4, Xbox will always have that, good or bad? I don't know but it's a thing and it counts)

But now, with the data clear on why is this something that is currently happening, the question switches to the other side of this, because yes, we have talked about Xbox as the platform, but it's Sonic, not a first party, he already has a home, but a different kind of home…

Does Sega know, or care about the situation?

Pretty sure they do know at least to some degree, after all, they were responsible for the games appearing again in the Backwards Compatibility program to be played in the current generation

We can tell that Sega was the one that selected what games were playable in the program because as I said before, these currently available games in Xbox were at one point available on Playstation Now

Xbox' Backwards Compatibility is emulation based, and as good as the emulator the software team at Xbox may be, it won't be perfect unless it has a large amount of years on development and research, something they realistically won't do, and we have been aware of games that took a long time to work properly in the emulator or directly didn't work and didn't make the cut, so we could believe that games like Sonic 2006 are not in the program by some emulation issue

But here comes Playstation Now, with basically the same Sonic game library

Unlike Xbox' BC, Playstation Now was (and currently still is) ran in real PS3 hardware, there won't be any incompatibility issue, In exchange for a lack of enhancement for these games, some would definitely take it over emulation if it means total compatibility, so we are 100% Sega had the word on what games are available now and what games aren't (as they have the right to, and should)

Talking about enhancements

We have to talk about the enhancements some games got on the new consoles

As we are all aware, Sonic Generations was one of the games to be Xbox One X Enhanced, allowing us to go up to 4K, quite cool, but that was it at the moment

Until Xbox' 20th Anniversary, where in the event stream it was revealed that Sonic Generations, Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed and more importantly, Sonic Unleashed would get a 60FPS patch, quite a big deal, especially for the latter

Xbox is currently not only the only way to play these games in a current console, but now, the best ways to play these

Sega was most likely asked for permission to do this, or maybe it was Sega who asked for this to me done, but at the end of the day, all of this was done by the Xbox' software team,  Sega didn't have to put his hand on the process, it was something called Teamwork

So, returning to the earlier questions 

Xbox could pretty much be Sonic's main console home, I believe it could be advertised as such how it currently is without anything else big

But now again, a newer question 

Would Sega do that?

Would Sega make Sonic's home Xbox?

And more importantly, if they don't, where could it be and what are they going to do about it?

I'm one of those people who believes that Sonic would fit a lot in Nintendo, at the end of the day it's where most of the sales of the franchise are, no matter what, it's always been like that

And Sega seems to have pushed for that to be the case, there's been a lot of exclusives, some by different reasons but the point is, both Nintendo and Sega seem to believe Sonic's best fit is Nintendo, but if it wasn't Nintendo most would then look at Playstation

But neither has really been an actual attempt

And by coincidences and opportunities the destiny gives, at the end looks like Xbox has given Sonic the most care

I'm betting if the opportunity and decisions where up to Sega, it would be Nintendo

But currently, Xbox has taken the win

However even after saying this, I do want to suggest a new question 

Does Sega want to give Sonic that kind of home?

Probably not a priority, and if they do, I'm sure nothing will really change, at least right right now

Well see how the future of the hedgehog is, perhaps in 5 or so years, maybe Sonic will be in the best state he's been in quite some time game-wise, perhaps that could actually make any of the 3 platforms try to get a piece of the cake and persuade Sega to give Sonic more stuff there (not being bought tho, Sega seems to prefer to be independent that way)

But it's soon to tell

In the meantime, Sonic Unleashed can be enjoyed in it's 60FPS glory in the current generation of Xbox

Hopefully some Sonic games are added to Game Pass, accessibility is key, and Sonic & Knuckles used to be in it in the early days of the service

No I will NOT count PC as a platform it´s not a console and no amount of Decks or Docks will change that sorry lol

This is a rewritte of a Blog Post from May about the same thing, I didn´t quite like the original result by it´s rushed nature, but I believe this new version is better in every way...

So... 

If you're here, and found this part, congrats, because this is basically a post-credits scene (text?) and I'm adding this section without telling anybody

Without more to say let's start talking about, a big problem we have related to this

Even if Xbox can have most Sonic games, and some with advantages over the competition, we really need to talk about...

Xbox, still with all, getting the short end of the stick???

Well, yes, let me explain

Sonic games on Xbox have always been "on par" to the other consoles versions, and as my current generation examples, some even better here, all of this was still happening on the Xbox 360, however, after the exclusivity deal Sega got with Nintendo ended, Sonic games returned to be multiplatform, thus, releasing for the "new generation of consoles" featuring the PS4 and Xbox One, nothing out of the ordinary here, the first title we got of this was Sonic Mania, a very polished up game in all platforms (besides the Switch at launch, updates fixed all issues, as it's port was handled by a third-party instead of in-house like the other versions were), but then the time came for Sonic Forces, things weren't looking 1:1 as we would have wished

Sonic Forces seems to have been developed with the PS4 as the "main version", the PC, Switch and Xbox ports came after, and this shows, as PS4 also seems to have the best console version of the game, 1080p, 60fps, the full deal

Switch as expected, got lower details, as it's not on par with the PS4, and it being a year one title for the console, got out with a downgraded visual aspect, and 720p, 60fps, even with that, it is still a good looking version of the game

It's a fact that between PS4 and Xbox One, Xbox was the least powerful, but not really by a whole lot, a lot of early games clearly showcased the advantage PS4 had, but with the passing of time, games started to be basically the same on both consoles, if anything just some differences, nothing as big as what Forces showcased

Forces on Xbox, runs at a surprising 720p, considering PS4 runs the game at 1080p, it was a noticeable downgrade, the kind of downgrade that hadn't been really seen since the early years, as I already explained

At least, it retained the 60fps, but on top of the resolution decrease, it lacked any sort of V-Sync, which in return gave the game a not-really-too-common but very noticeable screen tearing, it's surprising to see, and I think most here can agree that there's no way the game couldn't at least achieved a resolution like 900p for some parts of it

But, I think it's fair, it was their first Hedgehog Engine 2 title for Xbox One

The next batch of releases didn't get really a lot of this kind of issues specific to Xbox, at least not this noticeable, it took 5 years for us to see a brand new Sonic game by Sonic Team, being Sonic Frontiers, this game's base version seems to have been PC, so probably that helped a bit this time around

Frontiers on Xbox is basically a match with the PlayStation versions, on Xbox One however, once again, we have lower graphic presets than PS4's

Expected, but that's not where the issue is, and now, it's something that affects ALL Xbox versions

Frontiers on Xbox seems to exhibit a weird analog stick behavior, it's seems like the game has some sort of magnet to the main 4 directions of the stick (up down left and right), where in PlayStation or Switch, to lean just a bit to one side you just have to move the stick a bit, you have to lean a lot more on the Xbox versions, it makes stuff like doing a full Cyloop circle feel off compared to playing on the other consoles, it's weird that this is here, it's been here since launch, never addressed, it feels like they weren't even aware of it being an issue at all

However, things don't end here for Frontiers on Xbox...

Frontiers has 2 performance modes on console, one that prioritizes resolution but caps the game at 30fps (used to be named in-game "4K Mode" but renamed to "Prioritize Resolution"), and other that prioritizes 60fps but let's the game get at whatever resolution it needs to go down to keep them stable (used to be called 60FPS Mode, now it's just called "Prioritize Performance"), these modes were supposed to be available on all "next" generation consoles, being PS5 and both Xbox Series X and S... Key word is "Supposed"

As in release, Series S had no Performance mode to be seen, and when approached to, Sega didn't even knew this was a thing, they just suggested that if you had the console to display on 1440p or higher on the system settings, bringing it down to 1080p would "enable" the performance mode, or at least the toggle for it, they weren't really clear on that

Testing from Digital Foundry showcased that this didn't do anything at all, and I for myself can confirm, not even 720p would enable anything, on late November however, Sega would have to put out a patch to enable it (that's when the settings were renamed)

Seems like quite the oversight, but at least they were able to fix it quick enough, but it was and still is confusing, why was it not there at launch? Why didn't they mention it? They even went to say it was on a system level thing instead of just saying "we're working on it, please wait" 

Besides that Frontiers was "clean", but PS5 definitely was the best console version just by that Xbox analog issue alone

But

Frontiers wasn't the last game that would show this kind of weird issues on Xbox specifically

Enter 2023's Sonic Superstars, the newest Classic Sonic game, instead of being entirely done by Sonic Team, it was mostly done by Arzest, developer founded by Naoto Oshima, who we can (and will) consider Sonic's (only) Dad

Like Frontiers, it looks like this game's base version was PC, and generally all the versions are quite good on a technical and performance side, and console versions including Switch felt good to play...

That's what I would have said if ONE SET OF CONSOLES didn't release with quite the Input Lag, and lack of responsiveness in general

You will never guess what set of consoles I'm talking about...

THE XBOX!!! (wowie zowie no way!!! 0_0) 

Again, as showcased by Digital Foundry's testing of the game, the Xbox version is by far the least responsive of them all

On top of all of this, the Xbox Series S version is still capped at 1080p, not even getting to 1440p

One would say "okay, is the kind of thing that could be fixed by updates"...

This is where the possibly biggest issue comes in...

The game got the 1.1.5 update in January, it got to Xbox at the same time as all the other consoles, quite usual for Sega to wait until the patch is able to be released on all systems to release it, instead of dropping the patch as it gets ready on each platform, but the game's 1.1.8 update from February was different

The update released on PS5/PS4, Switch and PC, and the patch notes on Sega Asia's website mention it's also on Xbox... However... It wasn't there... 1 day... 2 days... 3 days... A week... 2 weeks... A month...

Nothing...

The game on Xbox is, to this day, still missing the 1.1.8 update on Xbox

Maybe it sounds like something insignificant, but I genuinely can't think of another time something like this has happened

Xbox time and time again, keeps getting the short end of the stick, it's surprising to see how after all we know from the first part of the post, stuff like this keeps happening

Hopefully things can change for the better, not just to push this thing of Sonic's Home, but for Xbox players to get a good treatment after playing and buying their games, not having to deal with issues that everyone else doesn't, even if Sonic players on Xbox are few, it shouldn't matter

If you're all the way down there, I just want to say, thanks a lot for reading all!!!