Sonic Frontiers was planned for 2021 but pushed back to focus on quality

Gotta Take As Much Time As is Appropriately Necessary

Sonic the Hedgehog fans were understandably stoked when December’s Game Awards presentation featured the reveal of brand new adventure Sonic Frontiers. However, when publisher Sega announced that the new release would be debuting in 2022, some in the community were left wondering why Sega hadn’t seen fit to release the title in 2021, to coincide with The Blue Blur’s 30th-anniversary celebrations.

Well, according to information released during a Sega Sammy investor Q&A, it seems that Sonic Frontiers was originally designed and put into production with hopes for a 2021 launch, but it was decided to take the foot off the gas in order to ensure that Sonic’s return hits a high mark of quality — something that, frankly, the Sonic the Hedgehog community has had to do without for many, many releases. Sonic Frontiers hopes to turn this stigma around.

“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” noted Sega officials during the Q&A session. “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 [we] have a feeling that it will become a good game and have high expectations for it.”

Sega remained quite tight-lipped on the nature of Sonic Frontiers itself, refusing to confirm nor deny features of the exciting new adventure. The publisher did, however, take a walk down a very long path to reveal that Sonic Frontiers will likely retail at a premium price point, due to its extended production cost and Sega’s keenness to cement the perceived prestige of the Sonic the Hedgehog property. This latter point might raise eyebrows, given Sega’s recent comments about dabbling in the maligned NFT market.

Sonic Frontiers will launch in 2022 on PlayStation, Xbox, PC, and Nintendo Switch platforms. In the meantime, you can catch Sonic in action via the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 movie, which premieres April 1 in the UK and April 8 worldwide.

Sonic Frontiers was once a 2021 title [Sonic Stadium]