Gee what a coincidence. Anyway I do kinda feel Sonic is going downhill... one way or another... slowly.... grr it would take a miracle just for this franchise to be on the same status on Mario now. And yes S3&K is still awosome to me. I still got a Nomad to this day and a ton of batteires just to play S3&K portable and on the go! And... well yeah I guess the classics are that good after all.
Alright I get it. It wasn't to their expectation. *Sighs*. What a rollercoaster this franchise been...well at least Sega's got other games that are liked. Like Chromehounds or Phantasy Star Universe. With their lead mascot..... I'm just going to leave it for something to debate.
Some Sonic fans tend to go overboard and I guess they still hope for good in this series is because... well it's hard to see your childhood hero have a bad finale to his stature and time.
Unfortunatly the series is going down hill as you said but the bigger dissapoinment it that I think SatSR could make it go up: 2 steps right. But then StH has to come out and somewhat ruin it: 1 steps left. What do you get? Same place. And there isn't much to go on with with SR but it seems like another 2 steps left. So if they could just leave out 1 good game they could avoid the likely 3 steps back. As they say 2 steps foward; 3 steps back.