SEGA Games SEGA: Sonic the Hedgehog Success 'Forged Path' For New Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxi Games

[Dreadknux]

SEGA has said that the company's plan to revitalise its legacy franchises was made because of its recent success with Sonic the Hedgehog, stating that the blue blur "has forged new paths for SEGA."

Alongside its grand reveal for new games in the Jet Set Radio, Golden Axe, Shinobi, Streets of Rage and Crazy Taxi series last night, SEGA issued a press release that included comments from Co-COO of SEGA Corporation and CEO of SEGA of America Shuji Utsumi , who credited the Sonic franchise in leading the way and offering the publisher the chance to revitalise its other IP.

"In recent years, Sonic the Hedgehog has forged new paths for SEGA, bringing the franchise to life and reaching new audiences in ways we had only dreamed of in the past," Utsumi said. "Building off that success, we are digging into our legacy and reimagining several franchises to bring these games to more audiences around the globe.

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"Today's announcement is just the start of our initiative. First and foremost, our ambition will be to create great games with memorable characters and worlds. We hope fans of all ages will look towards our future with anticipation as we release these projects in the coming years."

Sonic the Hedgehog has no doubt been a breakout success story for SEGA over the last five years; starting with Sonic Mania and the Sonic Brand Team's popular social media activity, the strategy to leverage a number of multi-media partnerships (including deals with Paramount and Netflix to create movies and animated series) gave the franchise a new lease of life.

This led to a whole new captive audience to experience a number of Sonic games that have arrived since, from Sonic Frontiers' gameplay reboot to Sonic Origins and Superstars' appeal to older and family players. If you compare the state of the IP of ten years ago, it's easy to see that Sonic is in a much better place today. And SEGA execs have repeatedly said as such too, with financial reports consistently highlighting Sonic Frontiers' breakout sales records.

As SEGA fans (as well as Sonic fans), knowing that the recent success of Sonic has helped encourage SEGA to be more bold and revisit its broader IP catalogue is incredibly heartwarming. What do you think of Utsumi's words? Let us know in the comments section below.

Source: SEGA Press Release (via Crunchyroll)

Sonic News Tips Credit:
Red Hot Jack

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[Shiny Gems]

I wonder how this will work out?

I mean, it’s nice they are doing this, but those games are not nearly as well known as Sonic, so I am not sure how well they will sell; not just in comparison to Sonic games, too.

[castell-neath]

New streets of rage?! Yes please!

Golden axe, jet set radio, yep i'm happy.

Kid Chameleon next please!

[The Swordsman]

Streets of Rage 4 did pretty well, so I'm glad Sonic could help it and the other franchises listed in the trailer come back. While I was at the point of wanting NiGHTS to be merged into the canon of Sonic the Hedgehog if nothing else to keep it on life support and because I thought its lore would work really well with what was already established in Sonic Shuffle, (and now Dream Team I guess) hopefully NiGHTS won't need that and will make a come back as well.

[CalmCha0s]

I hope these sell well. They obviously won’t do as well as Sonic, but hopefully nostalgia will help. I’m so excited for these series to be making a comeback!

[ShadoW21x]

Hope this will lead to either remakes or new shining force games like old shining force 2 on Sega console.

[Failinhearts]

I remember when Jet Set was leaked a long while ago alongside Persona 3 Reload. Glad to have it finally out there!

But a new Crazy Taxi really caught me by surprise. Now that one's probably the one I have most on my radar. I've adored Crazy Taxi since the Xbox, and have been rediscovering my love for it on my Steam Deck. So it's like, perfect timing, stars aligning stuff.

[Vlad the Vampire]

I hope it will be SOR5, SOR4 is sooooo good that we need to follow the heroes' next ADVENTURES (and fights of course)!!...

The new SHINOBI looks impressive, in the beginning I thought it was made by Dotemu!!...

And I'm eager to play a new GOLDEN AXE game too!!...

(In interviews, people from Dotemu said they would love to work on new SHINOBI and GOLDEN AXE games, it would have been wonderful...)

[Chocoburger]

Happy to see old SEGA IPs be revived, and hoping to see more revivals in the future, such as NiGHTS and Panzer Dragoon (developed in-house and not by a small third party working on an extremely tight budget).

But one thing SEGA could easily do is port a lot of their arcade exclusive games to modern platforms. That right there is an easy victory for them.