Game News Sonic Frontiers: SEGA aims very high for the blue hedgehog’s 3D open-world
Published on 05/21/2022 at 14:49
SEGA is planning to release its most ambitious Sonic project yet with Sonic Frontiers. With an all-new open-world 3D adventure, the famed publisher wants a supersonic start for its blue hedgehog by setting some pretty high goals internally. The CEO and CFO of the firm recently reaffirmed these ambitions.
Sonic Beyond Borders
Scheduled for the end of 2022, Sonic Frontiers is the new iteration of the blue hedgehog. For this opus, SEGA is thinking big and intends to make it a must. In addition to contemporary mechanics and its open world, Sonic Frontiers aims to rekindle fan interest in the license, but also to attract a new community.
The publisher displays great ambitions, in particular with high scores from aggregators such as Metacritic, as evidenced by recent statements by Haruki Satomi and Koichi Fukazawa, respectively CEO and CFO of SEGA Sammy, the publisher’s parent company.
We have set targets internally, while there is a relationship between high game ratings on external aggregators and high sales in Europe and North America. If the game gets high ratings, it may become a must buy, and then possibly synergize with sales, so we’re currently working to perfect the game closer to release.
SEGA’s phare license
This statement is not the first that indicates that SEGA is betting big with Sonic Frontiers. In 2021, the license’s current creative director Takashi Iizuka had already said that he hoped this new game would have the same lasting impact as Sonic Adventure.
Sonic Adventure built the foundation for Sonic games another twenty years following its initial release, so along the same lines I really hope this new game will lay the foundation for the next Sonic titles to come – that’s the idea behind the challenge that our team must take up.
It must be said that Sonic and his band represent sacred numbers for SEGA. Sonic 2 recently became the highest-grossing video game film adaptation of all time in the United States while Netflix is preparing an animated series for us. On the video game side, the blue hedgehog will be back with the retro compilation Sonic Origins from June 22, just to wait before the release of Sonic Frontiers, still scheduled for the end of the year.