Sega is Using Sonic Prime to see if depairing Rouge from Team Dark is a good thing or not

And most likely taking apart all of the "teams" except for Team sonic to some extent. Source Part of Frontiers was about Tails getting away from Sonic (and Amy but mostly tails) and Knuckles not just getting off his island to help/hang with Sonic and Tails

They also did that to an extent with Sonic being sorta of Fond of Omega in Dialouge in Frontier

I think the idea going forward maybe is that Sonic will always be the main playable but his cast won't be as forced or be pigeonhold like they were in Forces

This also has the benefit of seeing if they can play around with the Sonic formula Al la Rush, Story book, and Heroes

Other theory is that they are thinking of spliting into side games and Rouge is finally going to get a spy/MGS game

THE reason for this, beyond being a fan favorite

Rouge is this super wierd (but makes sense considering she is techincally always on the good guy side and is only an anti-hero because she is part of Team dark) pick to make as the final member of the good guy reoccuring cast

Especially since Big is sorta making cameos

Like you got Cream and Cheese, Silver, Blaze, Sticks, Mighty, and Ray as ones I would put before Rouge, and I like rouge

I'm actually surprised Silver and blaze haven't popped up yet honestly

or Nack

it'd be super interesting if they were starting to test the waters by mixing things up

even if it's switching up the teams

yeah

Like prime is this wierd weird thing

It's actiony, but its the type of proper sonic action that we haven't had since sonic X sorta

like Boom had sonic style action but this is emulate the game sonic style action and only X did that

SatAM/AoStH/SU were int he cartoony vien of the preadventure but it was adapting with the power rings being nominal at best

Like for a while Sonic had a mandate of no Families since everthing that was the Archie series

suddenly SEga changes that Mandate and we get Sage, with Orbot and Cubot getting grandfathered into her brothers

during Archie era and for a while Sonic (I think it was 06's fault actually) Sonic wasn't allowed to show strong emotions outside of being cool and now we got Frontier and Prime showing distress and other things and tackling bigger subjects

Sega has sent an email out basically saying that since Sonic makes money no matter what, its not a priotity to make the games great

And as soon as the favorable response to Boom we get a comedic but more serious Netflix show

and Frontiers suddenly gets DLC that was not planned

lots going on

Not only that Sega did something truly odd and brought in Sticks and Tangle (at least acknowledged them by name) in the mainline games

ALSO

One of Segas biggest Mandates for sonic is about Tails

He's not allowed to be wearing clothes and yet we get nines

same thing with Dread Knucks