SEGA West CEO Sees Chances Ahead For Sonic to “arc out to do different things”

Following comments on Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 a few days ago, VG247 has posted up their full interview with SEGA West CEO Mike Hayes, and it features a couple more pieces of discussion about Sonic. When asked what his standout moment for the company is, Hayes expresses his pride for SEGA and Nintendo’s bringing together of both of their mascots for the Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games series.

“In my time at Sega, I’d come back to Chronicles, but I have to say Mario and Sonic simply because of many things,” said Hayes when asked for a standout moment.

“For me personally, doing that deal with Nintendo when we were such adversaries and bringing the two greatest icons together, for me, is a real sense of pride. Then the fact that its sold 20 million units so far on the two that we’ve released mean people like it, which is great.

That’s not the only standout moment for Hayes, though. The SEGA West boss also talks about his fondness for Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, which he admires because it does something different with the Sonic the Hedgehog brand.

“But in terms of imagination, I actually thought what we did with Chronicles was pretty good, which was actually trying to do something with Sonic that wasn’t just about speed and getting from A to B as effectively as possible. And that, I thought, was a pretty good game. Sold reasonably well, didn’t break any record, but I enjoyed that because it was different.

With Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood in mind, Hayes thinks there are more chances ahead to arc Sonic out to do other things.

“And that gives us kind of a clue about mainly the future of Sonic. There are chances for him to sort of arc out to do different things, maybe.”

Hayes ends the interview by noting the success of Sonic Colours in sales, ratings and popularity.

I like [2010 Wii and DS title] Colours a lot because I think that’s the best main platform standalone Sonic that we’ve done in many years. And it was hugely popular and it did extremely well based in America and Europe. I just think that was an excellent game, I think [Team Sonic producer Takashi] Iizuka did a good job on that and it rated pretty well. But for me, from my time at Sega, I’d probably say M&S and Chronicles.”

Source: VG247

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