Sonic devs want to know what Zelda Tears of the Kingdom and Armored Core 6 have that Frontiers doesn't

09.11.2023 - 17:26 / gamesradar.com / Sonic

The creator of Sonic the Hedgehog is questioning what games like The Legend of Zelda or Armored Core 6 have over Sonic Frontiers in a recent interview. 

In an interview with Famitsu (translated by Automaton), Sega game director Morio Kishimoto and producer Sachiko Kawamura discussed Sonic Frontiers' success and questioned what it is lacking when compared to other popular games. It's been a year since Sega published Sonic Frontiers, and although not everyone was blown away by the title - take our Sonic Frontiers review as an example - it's still managed to sell 3.5 million copies worldwide in that time. 

Reflecting on this impressive achievement, Kawamura said: "Well, to be honest, I want to go much much further. I think we can go further," before revealing that Sonic the Hedgehog titles tend to sell for a long time after their release, and so 3.5 million copies actually isn't that big of a number in terms of Sonic games. 

Interestingly, the pair also revealed that Sonic Frontiers sold better in the West than it did domestically, which led Kishimoto to question what it is that stops people from picking it up: "What is it lacking? What failed to resonate with them?" The director then goes on to say: "What did we miss when thinking of ways to appeal to players? If there's something that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom or Armored Core 6 have that Sonic Frontiers doesn't have, we want to know!"

To help you compare the three titles, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom managed to achieve 19.5 million units sold in the first half of the current fiscal year - according to the company's most recent financial report. As for Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon, the action RPG managed to beat all Dark Souls games to become the second-biggest FromSoftware launch on Steam. Both games were released six and nine months after Sonic Frontiers respectively. 

There are still plenty of great games in Sega's series too, you can find out which ones we like the most with our best Sonic games list.