It may come as a surprise to you, but some game publishers and developers are actually quite humble. Maybe too humble. Case in point, the president of SEGA Shuji Utsumi recently called their latest 2D Sonic game, Sonic Superstars, “disappointing.”
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.
Perhaps Utsumi is referring to the sales of Superstars, but it doesn’t look that way from the quote. It looks like he’s saying he was disappointed creatively with the game. He goes on to say that the future will be bigger and brighter for the hedgehog.
I remember similar quotes in the past about how SEGA was disappointed with Sonic and that the future would be better, so it seems like a reccurring pattern of SEGA themselves being humble and brutally honest about their displeasure with the blue blur. It’s kind of depressing when the company boss isn’t fully confident in their products…
Having said that, as Utsumi noted, Sonic X Shadow Generations was “very good,” and you can watch our review for confirmation of that (below). Alternatively, you can read the review here.
SEGA also just announced a new Sonic racing game (which seems like it will be a spiritual sequel to the Transformed racing game), so look forward to that in 2025 for Nintendo Switch.
Read the full (and interesting) interview with the SEGA president on Eurogamer.