The next game on the way with Sega’s speedy mascot Sonic is, as you may know, Sonic X Shadow Generations, which premieres on October 25. It will then come to the full suite of PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series S/X.
And this setup is something we should expect in the future as well, despite many claims that older consoles make it harder to optimise for the newer ones. In an interview with IGN, Sonic Team producer Takashi Iizuka explained why they are going this route:
“As a market, we have the high-end machines, high-end consoles. Coming out with those consoles, we feel that we can make newer Sonic games that can express the speed of Sonic and with much better gaming UI as well. However, we want to support the lower spec constants as well. So even though the PS5 Pro is coming out, or new innovations or technology are coming out, we feel that it is important to support with the lower spec consoles and let many of the users keep playing Sonic.”
Given that Switch 2 is just around the corner and is said to be about as powerful as PlayStation 4, we can safely assume that Sonic Team will continue to support older formats for a very, very long time.
On the other hand, games like Sonic Superstars, Sonic Origins Plus and Sonic Frontiers have provided plenty of great platforming entertainment despite not pushing any envelopes graphically – so this really shouldn’t be a problem, right?