In a new interview with VGC, the head of the Sonic Team Takashi Iizuka, says that while he’s heard some of the fans cries for a delay for Sonic Frontiers on Twitter, he is very confident that the end result will please players. Mr. Iizuka said that they have been recruiting play testers who have provided the team with “Great feedback” for Sonic Frontiers and he said the majority have said “They have had a lot of fun playing the game and if they had to rate Sonic Frontiers from what they have played they would score it around 80% or 90%. Sonic Frontiers is out later this year on Nintendo Switch and other platforms.
Based on the released footage, many fans called for the game to be delayed on Twitter. Is a delay an option, should you deem it necessary?
Frontiers is in development now, and actually we’ve been doing a lot of playtesting with our target audience, who would be in that demographic of someone who’d play a Sonic game and enjoy it. From our playtesting results, we have been iterating, we have been listening to the comments that come back, but we’ve also been getting a lot of great feedback from people who rate the game and are like, ‘I had a lot of fun playing this game, I’d give it like an 80 or 90 point score out of 100’.
So, we do feel that we’re getting to the point where this game is done, and people will like it, and we do want to get that game into our fans’ hands as soon as possible.
The overwhelming concern from those fans appeared to be to ensure that Sonic Team has as much time as it needs to make a great game. Do you have enough time? And do you have the choice to delay?
We really feel confident in the playtest results that we’re getting. A lot of people are saying they had a lot of fun, they really enjoyed the game.
We realise a lot of people are watching the videos online and making assumptions, but we do feel confident based on the playtest results from the target demographic that are coming in and playing the game start to finish, they really like the game and we’re confident that we’re making a game that will be satisfying.