Sega has published the transcript for the questions & answers session of its latest financial conference, and it included interesting information about the upcoming Sonic Frontiers.
We hear from chief financial officer Koichi Fukazawa, who mentioned that the company has “high expectations” for the game, and anticipates a beneficial effect of the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 movie to have a beneficial effect on sales.
We have high expectation for “SONIC FRONTIERS”, the mainstay title that is scheduled to be launched
this winter. In the previous film, repeat sales of Sonic titles grew and Sonic’s licensing business was also
positively affected after the film was released. The same effect is expected in the film this time, which has become a bigger hit than the previous one, and while aiming to expand the reach of Sonic IP, we also want to aim for the upside for the new title
On top of that, the executive was asked whether the company is considering a delay to improve the game in response to the “various opinions” expressed by users about the game. We hear that there is no such plan, while the company plans to continue to strengthen the Sonic IP.
“We do not consider postponing the launch at this point. Within the communication with users, we intend toreflect the parts that can be reflected within the development timeline and to build empathy with users.
Sonic IP is a mainstay title we will sell over the long term in the future, and we will continue to strengthen it in the next fiscal year onwards as well.”
Interestingly, another question was about whether Sega plans to change its pricing strategy to encourage repeat sales of games (IE: sales of older games released in previous quarters).
We hear that the company intends to keep prices “fair” while focusing on quality, and won’t lover prices just to achieve higher numbers.
“Essentially, our policy is to firmly develop high-quality titles and to sell them while maintaining fair prices.
We do not consider lowering prices just in order to sell the number.”
Sonic Frontiers will be released this holiday season for PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch.
You can check out the latest trailer and the first gameplay.
