SEGA president calls Sonic Superstars a “disappointment”

SEGA president Shuji Utsumi has said in a recent interview that he feels that Sonic Superstars turned out to be a disappointment for the company and didn’t live up to the company’s expectations. However, he says that he is immensely pleased with Sonic x Shadow Generations as that turned out to be not only a great game but received good reviews from the gaming press and gamers alike. He then went on to say that 2025 is going to be “next level” for the long-running franchise.

When Nintendo puts out a mainline Mario game, it’s a big event. One only comes out every five years or so. There’s always a new theme, but it’s still fundamentally ‘Mario’. At one point there were so many Sonic games coming out, it felt like there was no quality control. It just felt like a fiscal obligation. What are you doing to increase the quality level of Sonic games?

Utsumi: That’s a very good question. We were trying to do something creative with Sonic Frontiers. With Sonic Superstars it turned out to be a disappointment, in terms of the outcome compared to what we delivered. This time we have Sonic X Shadow Generations and the next Sonic movie, so we’re pushing things in the transmedia direction – movies and games working in harmony to make things bigger. But the core [of the experience] is the game. The game needs to be very good or else there is no transmedia effect.

The Sonic X Shadow Generations game is actually very good, I would say awesome, action-wise. But starting next year, it’s going to be the next level, as you will just see at TGA.

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Thanks to Greatsong1 and Sonicgalaxy27 for sending in the news tip!