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Sonic Team confirmed it is not planning to delay the game despite the wide fans' criticism following the release of the gameplay demo.
In early June, after the gameplay demo of Sonic Frontiers was revealed, the players asked the developers to delay the release of the title.
Players have criticized the game, noting that it looks more like a hobbyist "Unreal Engine tech demo" rather than an AAA title, so they launched a new hashtag – #DelaySonicFrontiers – with thousands of users using it on Twitter which made it briefly trend last week.
In 2019, in a similar way, the Sonic franchise fans managed to achieve a redesign of the main character's model for Sonic the Hedgehog when The Paramount team listened to the original negative reaction of the fans and decided to postpone the movie.
However, this time the fan's reception didn't make any change. In an interview with VCG, the head of Sonic Team Takashi Iizuka shared that the studio does not plan to delay the game based on a mixed reception of gameplay footage.
He explained that the negative reaction is caused by the fact that the players do not yet understand what kind of game it is going to be and compare it with previous parts of the Sonic franchise.
"So we do see a lot of people saying, ‘oh, it’s kind of like this, it’s kind of like that, but it’s not like this, it’s not like that’. And really, the team is going out and creating this new game format for Sonic, and we’re calling it an ‘open zone’ format," Iizuka said. "And this new game system itself is something that doesn’t really exist in any other comparable titles, so we really hope that from here until launch we can really explain what open zone gameplay is."
Iizuka noted that Sonic Team is currently conducting internal testing with longtime fans of the series, and the feedback it is getting has been quite positive. According to him, some of these testers even said they would give the game an 80 or 90-point score out of 100.
The developers believe players will get a better idea of what Sonic Frontiers is like when they try out the demo at Gamescom or the Tokyo Games Show later this year.
Sonic Frontiers is slated for release in 2022 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Microsoft Windows.
You can find the original interview with Takashi Iizuka here. Also, don't forget to join our new Reddit page, our new Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we are sharing breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.