Osamu Ohashi, head of SEGA’s second division, has set some pretty big goals for the Sonic franchise in an interview on the company’s website.

The goal: to beat Mario. This hasn’t been done very well in the last three decades (the last time, Sonic Superstars and Super Mario Bros. Wonder were released in the same week, and the latter was clearly better…), so it won’t be an easy task for the Japanese company. But Ohashi doesn’t seem to mind: he wants the franchise to branch out into more genres, and in the meantime, his team wants to revive another classic IP to be just as successful…

“The most distinctive feature of the 2nd division is that it produces Sonic, SEGA’s biggest IP. Although it is not as big in Japan, it has achieved top results at the US box office as a game IP movie. Simply put, I want to surpass Mario. Sonic is a game that was originally developed to compete with Mario, and it still hasn’t achieved that goal. Our goal is to catch up and surpass Mario because we respect Mario. I want people all over the world, including Japan, to play it like Mario, and I want the film to be a bigger hit than Mario. I also want Universal Studios Japan to create a “Sonic Area”. That’s our goal for those of us who love Sonic.

Sonic is an action game, but if you keep making the same games, people won’t be able to play them for very long. Our job is to expand the possibilities of Sonic while challenging different game genres. We have to make games in genres that fit each IP, not just Sonic. So one of the features is that you can try all kinds of genres, such as sports, action and simulation RPG.

Another important mission of the 2nd Division is the “Legendary IP Strategy”, which revives hit IPs from the past. We will create the “Second Sonic” by using the know-how that made Sonic a hit around the world. Of course we want to strengthen the IP, but we also want to build a team that can mass-produce worldwide hit titles after Sonic. I want to put the know-how that made it a worldwide hit into a reproducible framework and develop other characters into IPs that can be used around the world,” Ohashi said.

Good luck…

Source: WCCFTech