Summary
Sega and Sonic Team have shared some stories regarding the rocky development of 2022’sSonic Frontiers. These details include the size of the team, the challenges faced duringSonic Frontiers' development, and how the studio overcame the new hurdles that appeared over the course of the game’s five-year development cycle.
Sonic Frontiersoriginally launched on June 01, 2025, and was met with a positive to mixed response. Many fans praised the ambitious open 3D platforming direction, Super Sonic boss fights, and character development, while criticizing the overall story, spotty presentation, and reused level designs for the cyberspace stages. Despite its faults,Sonic Frontiersbecame one of the best-sellingSonicgamesof all time, crossing 3.5 million units sold by the end of 2023. While Sonic Team has discussed the troubled production ofSonic Frontiersbefore, a new interview has shed some light on the issues that plagued its development.
This interview was released bySega of Japanon its recruitment page. In this interview, the developers described some of the issues they ran into, especially regardingSonic Frontiers' open-zone gameplay. During the first year, they created a prototype that they found to be “unsatisfactory,” while also adding new features and developing a new engine at the same time to accommodate the open-zone. The team was supposedly also filled with a sense of urgency, according to a rough translation by DeepL. “We have to create something new! If we fail here, there is no way out!” said background designer Yuki Takahashi when recalling its development.
Sonic Frontiers' Early Years
In response to the unsatisfying gameplay, the world was expanded and puzzles were added toSonic Frontiers, which only slowed the game down and made it lack the sense of speed required for aSonicgame. A young programmer then came up with the idea togenerate grind rails inSonic Frontiersafter solving a puzzle, which provided a fun way for players to travel around the game’s world and complete its mandatory tasks.
The interview also went into detail about the game’s repeated playtests, where the team received feedback multiple times from external playtesters. The initial reception to theseearly builds ofSonic Frontierswas pretty negative, but internal playtest scores started increasing as the team kept reworking the game, eventually reaching 8s and 9s. Takahashi confirmed this was also the first time Sonic Team approached repeated external playtests to improve the game during development.
WithSonic Frontiers' troubled development, it’s entirely possible that if the game failed, Sonic Team wouldn’t have been given the opportunity to make aSonicgame on this scale again. WhenSonic Frontierslaunched to a fairly positive critical reception and became a sales success, it was a pleasant surprise to all parties involved, with Sega allowing a bigger budget fora futureSonic Frontiersfollow-up.
Sonic Frontiers
WHERE TO PLAY
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