SEGA and the Sonic Team finally unveiled the next mainline game in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, Sonic Frontiers, at The Game Awards last month. Judging from the teaser trailer which was shown at the event, the game will be an ambitious open world 3D Sonic game. Speaking to investors, SEGA says that Sonic Frontiers was originally meant to be released in 2021, however they decided to push it back to make sure that it fully lives up to gamers expectations, unlike other more recent 3D Sonic games.
SEGA told investors that they have spent a lot of time conducting analysis on Sonic Frontiers to make sure that it lives up to fans expectations and does the long-running franchise justice. Therefore, they have announced that they have introduced game testing “based on external evaluations” and that the team at SEGA feel as though Sonic Frontiers is shaping up to be very promising and that internally they have “high expectations” for the 2022 game.
SEGA has also told investors that because of their confidence in the final product they will be selling Sonic Frontiers as a full price game, unlike other games in the series, which have been given a discount upon release. SEGA concluded by saying that they are fully “focusing on quality” and that they are committed to spending a significant amount of money on the development and marketing of Sonic Frontiers. Now, let’s hope that the Sonic Team can pull it off. Sonic Frontiers launches later this year.
“Originally it was planned to be released on this year, the 30th anniversary of Sonic, but we have postponed the release for a year in order to further brush up the quality. Not only for this title, but during the development phase, we have been steadily conducting analysis to improve the quality of the title before release, such as introducing game testing based on external evaluations, and I have a feeling that it will become a good game and have high expectations for it.”
SEGASammy Investor Q&A
“For the pricing strategy, we feel that we are at a point where we need to rethink. For example, for the new Sonic game, as we are focusing on quality and spending certain amount of money on development, we think it is important to maintain the price by maintaining the value of the IP at high level, rather than simply lowering the price at early stage to increase the number of unit sales.”
SEGASammy Investor Q&A
Many thanks to Greatsong1 for the news tip!
