The GHZ Forum

Despite not having posted any forewarnings, Sonic Team have closed their official website and are now one with Sega.

The English language index, which was rarely updated, has gone together with its frequently updated Japanese counterpart.

The feature sections, such as Naka-sans diary, interviews with Sonic Team and the download area, have all been deleted, although none of these had been updated since 2001.

The bulletin boards and game sections have been retained allowing users to communicate with fellow fans and find information on all of Sonic Team’s games released since they started actively using the name in 1996 with NiGHTS into Dreams.

Sega Japan’s website has also been given a make over. The logos of its subsidiaries have been removed from the front page together with any references to them on the individual game pages.

The Sega Europe and Sega America sites have yet to undergo a similar pruning process.

The closure of the Sonic Team website is somewhat surprising as it is actually much older than Sonic Team Ltd. It originally launched around 1997/98 as a part of the Sega.co.jp site. The SonicTeam.com domain came into use in 2000 after being given to Sonic Team from its previous owner, Sonic fan Shayne Thames, who, incidentally, was rewarded with plushies, videos and early-release copy of Sonic Shuffle.

Welp, it all over...or it could be a new beginning...

Any final words?

<a href="http://www.sonicteam.com/chao/">Ah, at least the Chao Laboratory is still up.</a> I hope they don't remove that.

Hey, does anyone remember the exact date that Sega made its development studios semi-autonomous? I can't even remember whether it was before or after their official exit from hardware.

Before? The individual teams were making games for the Dreamcast.

Yep. Boot up JSR and check out that short-lived Smilebit logo.

Yeah, but those groups were named even before they were made semi-autonomous, weren't they? Way back when they were all called, like AM1, AM3, AM Annex, etc, etc. The only one named something else was Sonic Team (AM8). Then around the Dreamcast era they were all given names and logos, and only AM2 and Sonic Team opted to keep their current titles and logos. But they were still all directly controlled by Sega. Then around the time Sega announced their exit from hardware, the development studios were actually separated into semi-autonomous subsidiaries, meaning they were only partially under Sega's dictatorship. That's the event I'm trying to get an exact date for.

Would this help?

It's from the August 2000 issue of Official Dreamcast Magazine, which means the separation must have occurred during July 2000.


Edit: Actually it was April 2000

^_^

Ah, that's it. Muchos gracias.