in a way, Sonic's popularity is his own worst enemy. Despite his games being fairly shitty, they sell extremely well, fooling Sega into thinking Sonic should be on the level of Mario and putting him in sports games, RPGs, racing games, and trying to turn him and his friends into shitty platform game stars. In reality, Sonic is a really shallow character. He runs really fast from one end of a level to another. He works best (and probably only) as a 2D platformer, but Sega can't seem to do that. If Sonic were a little less popular, say at the Megaman level, maybe Sega could get away with what Capcom is doing w/ Megaman 9 and make a true 2D Sonic sequel for XBLA/PSN/VC, but it seems like Sega doesn't want to "lower themselves" to that.