Sega is putting all of its chips on the table with Sonic Frontiers

digitaltrends.com:

Back in May, I wrote about how Sonic Frontiers miraculously avoided the controversial Sonic Cycle by keeping updates dry between its first teaser trailer and its official announcement trailer at The Game Awards last year. Now the game is less than two months away from release, and with the reveal of four more trailers, two alternative rock songs taking us back to 2007 (Vandalize by One OK Rock and I’m Here by To Octavia’s Merry Kirk-Holmes), and Super Sonic making his triumphant return at the Tokyo Game Show, Sega seems confident that it will be a big deal for the franchise. Hell, I’m feeling more confident about this game than I ever felt for some of its predecessors. And that’s saying something.

In fact, Sega is so sure about Sonic Frontiers that it’s pricing the game at $60 — or in the case of the Digital Deluxe Edition, $70 — and putting it in direct competition with God of War: Ragnarok and Pokemon Scarlet and Violet in November. It’s a big gamble to go all in on, but also a sore point for some Sonic fans. Most current-gen AAA games are priced between $60 and $70 due to enhanced graphics, controls, and the engines they run on, but some have balked at Frontiers’ price tag not only because it’s “too expensive,” but because they can’t remember the last time a Sonic game cost that much.

The price tag deviates from the cost of past Sonic games, and that’s another sign that Sega believes Frontiers has the scope of a full-sized Sonic game — especially since it’s the first open-world game in Sonic’s history. That’s consistent with the rest of the game’s marketing cycle, which shows that Sega is more confident about the series than it has been in years.

In some ways, Sonic Frontiers‘ aggressive marketing push is a return to