They said, the auction house was a mistake and would turn it off if they could. Later those words turned into action and became a better game because of it. But I digress. It wasnt my attention to give so much weight to that statement. I really just want to know that these guys behind the wheel know what they're doing. So sort of an acknowledgement would be appreciated.
My perspective towards colors and generations is that colors had the better content, and generations had the better gameplay. So overall im with you on that (generations >colors).
I have a feeling the next sonic game may once again combine all the good things from previous sonic games. Possibly even sonic lost world's run/parkour button may be part of it. My concern is that they once again wont realise what was wrong with it (control wise).
I was only going off of Blizzard's press release in which they don't apologise or refer to it as a mistake (They even mention it is beneficial.)
http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/09/17/diablo-iii-auction-house-shutting-down-next-year maybe they mentioned it at some other point but they didn't seem very apologetic at that point and it's normal. Unfortunately unless it is a highly unacceptable situation such as the PSN problems Sony suffered, companies, especially those with shareholders, are not going to come out and say sorry.
In regards to Generations and Colours here's how I would weigh down the extra content. Sonic Generations had 18 normal levels, 7 bosses and 100 missions, Sonic Colours has I believe 12 normal length stages (Act 1 and 6.) 24 "ministages" 7 extra stages and 7 bosses too.
In terms of the core stages I think I much prefer Sonic Generations, if just for classic Sonic alone, and the number of them. Some are really expansive like Ocean Palace and I did love playing Rooftop Run with classic Sonic (I just wished it was a more final level, I would have loved to see Eggman Land without the werehog stuff holding it down and lowered difficulty.)
And even though the ministages for Sonic Colours could range from poor to good (And would much rather they focused on creating additional stages.) the fact that a few were good put it above the mission structure of Sonic Generations. Though my memory is hazy, some of them were quite fun but others, like the Tails mission in Green Hill Zone was a disaster! so Sonic Colours would get my vote on that
And the bosses win outright for me with Sonic Generations, though what's funny is that all the normal bosses in Sonic Generations is head and shoulders above anything in Sonic Colours... But the final boss for the latter is a great end battle whilst Sonic Generations seems like they ran out of steam towards the end of the development phase. The boss prior to that felt much more like the final boss than the final boss itself.
In regards to the next Sonic game we will see. I personally think SEGA was giving Iizuka some heat for the poor quality of their titles and that's why they improving at a remarkable rate from where they were. Perhaps the same could have happened with Sonic: Lost World but after they entered that exclusive agreement any sort of pressure that was there quickly evaporated. I do worry that they might relax and experiment too much with Sonic again as Iizuka can say that between Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Colours and Generations he oversaw three games that did over 8 million in sales and get the heat of his back.
On the other hand, SEGA have tried clamping down with what Sonic Team can do, from excluding multiple characters (Something Iizuka loves.) to kicking out unrelated gameplay styles (Again one of his favourite pass time.) cutting down the cast and even including classic Sonic in the anniversary game. So it really is going to come down to how safe SEGA wants to keep the formula, so you better hope Nagoshi is having a bad day in the office when time comes to review the latest Sonic title.
