
Sega: Sonic Frontiers Sales Greatly Exceeded Expectations, Sequel to Have Bigger Budget - Sales
by William D'Angelo , posted on 16 February 2023 / 5,872 ViewsSega's parent company, Sega Sammy Holdings, in a Q&A with investors revealed sales for Sonic Frontiers exceeded their expectations and the sequel will have a bigger budget.
"We are proceeding with this title based on a strategic sales plan," said Sega via Reddit. "We conducted intensive promotions around the November release, and as announced recently, we have been able to achieve good results so far. A temporary sale was held around Black Friday, but the selling price has since returned to normal.
"We have been able to achieve these results while maintaining a certain level of quality, and the number of units sold greatly exceeded our original estimation. We will continue to sell over the long term based on sales strategies such as pricing, promotions, and the development of further DLC."
Sega added, "We expect development costs for new titles to grow even larger in the future. We will strive to ensure solid quality in the development of major titles from our existing franchises. However, development labour costs will rise due to the impact of the global external environment, and we expect this trend to continue for the foreseeable future.
"Since it is necessary to take on these challenges for major titles, we are proceeding with a bigger budget, even from the basic research stage. Therefore, we assume that development costs for future new titles will increase accordingly."
Sonic Frontiers has sold over 2.9 million units as of December 2022.
The game released for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam on November 8.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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need to update the engine or move onto unreal 5 its a fast paced game shouldn't have to put up with all that popin
With more budget they should definitely be able to afford to upgrade the Hedgehog engine for the next game if they so choose to keep using it instead of switching to Unreal 5 like nearly everyone else is doing. They should also be able to hire a bunch more devs to get closer to their old size again (Sonic Team had shrunk quite alot after games like Sonic Forces and Sonic Lost World underperformed).
Even on a high-end PC with max settings the pop-in point is exactly the same as on Xbox, PlayStation, and on the Switch. Which seems strange. I'm not sure that's an engine limitation, it seems hardcoded into all the different versions of the game. If it's an engine limitation, it's a very strange one!
The Sonic franchise is obscenely profitable for the quality of its games, maybe one of the most uneven gaming franchises in that sense second only to Pokémon. The pile of terrible games doesn't turn people off, and every time they release a mildly okay game it sells like hot cakes. And when they somehow manage to release a good game--not great, just good--it is treated by the community as an untouchable masterpiece.
I'm in this boat. I became a Sonic fan thanks to Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast, but fell off the Sonic train due to mostly terrible quality games.
But I recently started playing Sonic Generations, and thanks to the FPS Boost update on Xbox Series consoles, it's gone from a nearly unplayable 30 fps cap (that it rarely hit) to an awesome 60 fps (that it almost always hits). So, so good!
Just don’t have a mandatory 2D section like the 3rd island. That was awful and made me stop playing.
That is great news, congrats, finally giving Sonic what its deserves.
great game, let's develop for the Switch 2 instead and less pop in please next time...
After the ending of Sonic Frontiers I don't know where the franchise can go next.
Frontiers actually setup quite alot story wise, with each of Sonic's 3 friends who were on the Island with him making big life decisions by the end, and Eggman becoming a father figure to Sage. As for the next game, Sonic Team has implied in other interviews that they want to make the next game into basically a combination of Sonic Frontiers and Sonic Adventure in terms of design, so sticking with the open world of Frontiers but presumably having multiple playable characters again. They also suggested they plan to do away with the boost mechanic in the next game, making it even more Adventure like.
That would be interesting to see. ^^