Sonic Team is widely regarded as an empty shell, a pale imitation of the development team whose mascot once rivaled Mario for control of the video game industry. Though the games continue to sell, and Unleashed is considered by some to be an improvement (however mildly so) on what SEGA has peddled for the past several years, there seems to be a darker truth behind Hedgehog House.

A bit of digging by tssz|news has uncovered a blog from 2006 by what seems to be a former SEGA employee, one who had a chance to work with Sonic Team on a few games, and spoke anonymously about them in a journal on Blogspot.

Though his legitimacy was questioned, the blogger known then only as "jpeg" expressed a lack of faith in SEGA's NiGHTS revival for the Wii. Soon after expressing his thoughts, his blog was swept clean but for a "good-bye" post, but thanks to a little thing known as the internet archive and the work of Green Hill Zone user FlashTHD, validation has come for the ex-SEGA employee, as his NiGHTS post included the following:

"Sonic Team are a relic from a past age who have overstayed their welcome. For the same marketing reasons that their name was initially kept (and has since backfired) they should be dissolved - it may already be too late for NiGHTS (and I really hope it isn't and they manage to turn it around, which with Iizuka-san's passion for the project is a possibility), but for the good of the company's image; for the future of Sega's other prestigious IPs and lastly for its iconic mascot it needs to be done… before they release another Sonic game with a transforming Evil 'Night' Sonic who looks like a werewolf and can stretch his arms out Dhalsim-style. It will happen, mark my words."

And as we all know by now, that game is what became Sonic Unleashed, uttered "over a year before anybody had ever spoken the word 'Werehog.'" This is assumed to have been a breach of NDA, leading to all posts being removed.

A little more work at the blog revealed the writer to be Ben Andac, a "Game Evaluator" and an "Admissions and Recruitment Executive" for both Sega Europe and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. Now, Ben writes editorials and reviews for Idle Thumbs, while his blog has been closed completely since the breaking of this story.

With his identity confirmed, a more revealing light is cast upon his earlier posts, showing the tenuous relationship between Sonic Team and SEGA of Japan. One such instance is that NiGHTS: Journey into Dreams was originally going to be an Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 title, of which Ben had played a 360 build at one point. That is, until a little white box called the Wii proved successful.

Upon witnessing the overnight success of the Wii, Sega of Japan apparently forced Sonic Team to retool the game for Nintendo's lower-spec platform, something its producer (Takashi Iizuka) was not happy about. Despite the shift in platform, the game's fast-approaching release date and limited development budget remained firmly unchanged, giving Sonic Team roughly one year to rebuild NiGHTS exclusively for the Wii (when most games typically take two years or more to develop).

And while SEGA had gone so far as to reincorporate several of its development teams, such as AM2 and Smilebit, back into the folds of their main office, it is said that Sonic Team was kept "external strictly as a sweatshop to milk the Sonic cashcow, assembly-line style."

Sega of Japan had intended NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams as a brief rest from the never-ending onslaught of Sonic game after Sonic game. In Ben's own words: "There's no doubt that Sonic Team have lost their quality touch. They are worse than talentless: they are without passion. Bored, weary, closed-minded and out of touch with any sense of what makes games good anymore." Quite simply put, after making so many of them, Sonic Team is tired of Sonic games - something Ben cites as a reason for Yuji Naka's resignation in 2006.

I've long wondered if perhaps Sonic Team was burned out, if they needed something more of a break or something to reinvigorate their passion for the business. It has been suspected that the recent efforts made in Sonic to do different things has been the result of Sonic Team being unable to create other new games featuring those gimmicks (with Sonic the Werehog drawing comparisons to Ristar, for one example). Now, it seems almost confirmed: Sonic Team is living in their own personal Hell, one which Yuji Naka managed to escape from when he formed his own external yet SEGA-funded company, Prope.

In the end, what this blog really represents is that, even within their own ranks, members of Sega's staff are unhappy with the direction Sonic Team as a development studio has headed. While it was easy to assume such, we now have confirmation of internal strife between Sonic Team and their parent subsidary, Sega of Japan. In relation, this goes a long way to explain the shortcomings of games produced by Sonic Team: They are forced to work on a franchise they no longer care about, and when they do get a chance to stretch their legs, it is under tight restrictions.

Now that we seem to know the strife with which Sonic Team seems to be forced to deal with, one is left to wonder if there is anything that we, as consumers and fans alike, can do to make SEGA loosen their reigns on the struggling developers. Like others, I've become rather annoyed, even frustrated by things done by Sonic Team. Now, it's become more of a sympathy, even pity.

Of late, Sonic Team has managed to make some competent Sonic games, but there has been this factor or that which has seemingly sabotaged the titles from being as good as they could be. One is left to wonder now if perhaps these measures are more deliberate; could this be Sonic Team's way of trying to set the Blue Blur up for failure, so that maybe SEGA will ease up?

Andac's blog answers several questions, but in so doing, introduces many more.