SEGA Europe: Future Releases AAA & Multi-Platform Titles On Next Gen Consoles & PC

14 July, 2017 12 February, 2021

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A new interview by licensing.biz has been posted with Jason Rice, who is the director of brand licensing at SEGA Europe. It’s a short one, but every single area of the Sonic branch (excluding the comics…) was brought up in a question. Here are the highlights of the interview:

With the Sonic Boom series now in its second season, how has the reception been to this series?

Rice: You don’t have to look too hard to see what kind of reception the series has had. We have a raft of major global broadcasters committed to seasons one and two across Pay, Free to Air and VOD platforms including Cartoon Network, Boomerang, Nickelodeon, and more recently a global deal with Netflix. Then we have the ever-growing list of awards. In fact, Sonic Boom now holds over 30 global awards and nominations, so we are delighted with the show and the success it has had to date.

A Sonic the Hedgehog movie has been confirmed as in the works. What can you tell us about this project?

Rice: We are making a hybrid CG/live-action family film but as with every major release, we are keeping our cards close to our chest whilst we finalise our plans around merchandise and marketing, so you will just have to be patient and look out for updates in the near future. The new Sonic movie is already set to be one of the biggest events in the history of the Sonic franchise.

Tell us about Sonic Forces. What opportunities will this bring?

Rice: Sonic Forces promises to be something really special for everyone from the casual gamer to the Sonic superfan. Early reaction to the teaser trailers and hands-on gameplay events at trade shows such as E3 have been really encouraging. Sonic Forces will allow you to play as both Classic and Modern Sonic as well as a customisable Hero Character equipped with a wealth of gadgets and unlockable items. All of our partners are set to benefit from Forces as we support the release with a heavyweight marketing programme. The majority of our future releases will be AAA multi-platform titles available on next generation consoles as well as PC and all supported by robust above the line activity. In addition, we are making available game-specific artwork, mini style guides and assets to our licensees to support the development of limited merchandise programmes.

Their plans for future releases is quite telling, a sign that they are no longer going to do things like the Nintendo-exclusivity deal from a few years ago. Considering that one of the things that contributed to the fall of Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric was that deal, there is room to argue that SEGA may be learning from the mistakes of developing that game. However, we’ll see. As per usual, make sure you check out the full interview, as these were not the only questions asked.

This post was originally written by the author for TSSZ News.

12 Comments

This pretty much confirms future Sonic titles for PC Yay!

See, the future of Sonic doesn’t rely on Sonic Mania. It just means to make good quality games weather they are 2D or 3D. What was the news about the comics? In talks again?

SEGA said that they are working hard in the Switch version to smooth the fps. ALSO, it’s pretty impressive that Switch can handle Sonic Forces so well.

SSJSonicXX14 says:

19 July, 2017 at 5:19 AM

Yeah maybe by the time it launches it will be at a cinematic 24 frames per second for roughly 45% of the time :^)

Gotta sell those toys to the kids!

It all sounds very promising. Hopefully it’ll all be smooth sailing for the franchise in the coming years. The only thing that has me worried is the upcoming movie… they state, “The new Sonic movie is already set to be one of the biggest events in the history of the Sonic franchise.” but how big exactly do they plan to go with this movie… IF the movie itself is even competent to begin with. I can’t help but feel like this could end up similarly to how Sonic Boom ‘as a spinoff branch/franchise’ was, pushed as big new thing for Sonic to later crash and burn because of the horrible games and their reception. I hope they don’t expect this movie to be super successful, especially with the stigma of CGI/Live Action movies and Video Game movies nowadays.

Sega of Europe right? Well I feel the words are meaningless. Oh well

SSF1991 says:

17 July, 2017 at 1:22 AM

SEGA Europe ports games over to PC, so I’d say they would know.

>Focus on AAA titles.
>Multi-platform and PC games (with no pesky Nintendo exclusives).

Love the sound of that, I just hope the keep up the quality.

Hey, avoiding another exclusivity deal like that is already a good first sign for me. Sure, Sonic on Nintendo can be fun sometimes, but only if you handle it right. Unless Sega were somehow able to randomly warp back into the console race, I think it’s best that the series remain nomadic, most of my favorite titles have been multi-console releases.

SSJSonicXX14 says:

19 July, 2017 at 5:43 AM

Remember all the nonsense thrown around here and other sites back when that started, Lost World was going to be so great and even better than Generations because they working on a single system that wasn’t the original Wii this time, the only good thing that came out of is that Sonic Team went for 60 FPS which they carried into Forces well at least for some ports of it, I wonder if a Lost World multiplatform maybe it would have a went a better direction then bizzare Galaxy wannabee that couldn’t decided what it actually wanted to be. If I recall Iizuka all but said that Lost World was meant to pander to Mario fans but they had a wrapped view of what was fun about the Galaxy games and how they well mix things up on certain worlds by introducing new gameplay mechanics that radically change things up and then are never seen again, this also had the bonus “benefit” of killing the momentum they had been building, if they had just made a actual earnest sequel Colors this wouldn’t have happened.

The deal destroyed ROL, I mean that project probably wasn’t going to end well regardless but ROL ended up being magnitudes worse because of it and effectively dug the grave of the game comportment of the Boom series which I assume would go on to be buried after Ice and Fire bombed.