After the success of Sonic on the big screen with the chilidog-eating hedgehog’s two movies, Sega is looking to build on that momentum by adapting its other IPs to other mediums, according to Sega chief operating officer Shuji Utsumi in a CNBC interview at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon, Portugal.
It’s been a pretty lucrative time for Sonic The Hedgehog following the release of the first movie, which, less than a month before the pandemic, went on to earn $320 million at the box office, with its 2022 sequel grossing slightly more with $405 million at the box office. While the quality of games in recent years hasn’t changed much, it’s hard to argue that Sonic is at the most popular since the ’90s; who knows, maybe even more.
“We just revived Sonic in a big way, not only through games but also remember movies and TV shows, and actually Sonic is in Roblox too, and we’re working closely now with Lego, so now Sonic is reviving,” Utsumi said in the CNBC interview.
With Sega seeing the work of its labour on Sonic progressing, the question is, where does the publisher go from here? Well, rather than pushing Sonic more, Utsumi wonders if they could make the same moves they did with Sonic and apply them to their other popular IPs, like having a Like a Dragon/Yakuza and Persona movie would be pretty great as a fan of both; if it was good anyway. To go beyond maybe even revive some of their other classic IPs, we’re not just talking about movies here as Sega is looking at other avenues like Roblox to bring these IPs back in modern times.
“We have other major IPs. We are thinking of reviving other classical IPs too. As I say, we are trying to be in a lot of different categories, different areas like Roblox, [and] movies. All these IPs can be somewhere else other than games soon,” Utsumi added.
