When I first learned about this in july of 2007 I was like this
and like this
too
But then, after some serius thoughts about it, and after viewing some info on the Sonic Universe, both on the official site for Sonic and on Wikipedia, I must say that I'm certain that Bioware will deliver a great roleplaying game with their Sonic RPG DS game (for kids mainly, but I'm sure grown-ups like me
are allowed to play the game, too
).
And yes, the good doctors of Bioware are indeed (secret) Sonic the Hedgehog fans.
So it was of course naturally for them to do a sonic rpg game when asked. As I said above, the whole Sonic Unverse is really diversified if you look into it and screams to make a classic Biowarian tale of comradery, deceit, betrayal and lots of fun combat to rescue the princess of something like that.
That said, Bioware also wanted to break into the handheld market. And their business strategy seem to be to use existing IPs to break into (rpg) markets and then go about making their own IPs when they have a solid foothold in said market.
Let me all remind you that one of the best rpgs for 2006 (I think) also came out for the DS, and that was (and is), ofcourse: Lego Star Wars. I enjoy playing a kid's game at the moment called 'belief and betrayal' as much as I enjoy playing The Witcher or Baldur's Gate.
/aries100