Sonic had suffered a large loss in popularity at this point in time, with the majority of the culture lead it had over Mario in the early 90s now all but gone, Sonic was entering a weird phase. The Sega team knew that it had to make a change if it wanted to continue to contend with Mario and Nintendo, but Sega was also spread thin, not nearly as profitable as Nintendo was, and also incapable of making games to the same standard. Time and time again, projects were being rushed due to poor direction decisions, resulting in games that could’ve been good but ended up being mediocre, or downright bad. The turn of the 21st century would mark the beginning of the end for the majority of the good will Sonic had going for it. On top of the declining popularity of Sonic, Sega no longer had a staple gaming console that it could sell, and this was the large basis of it’s problem. Sega stopped making consoles in 2001, and since then has relied on other companies to pick up it’s titles. People buy Nintendo consoles to play Nintendo titles, and to specifically play Mario games, but Sega didn’t have that anymore.