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Sega has said that it wants high review scores for Sonic Frontiers, the upcoming open-world Sonic the Hedgehog game.
During an investor Q&A (via VGC), Sega Sammy’s CEO Haruki Satomi and CFO Koichi Fukazawa spoke about review scores:
“We have set internal targets, as the correlation between the scores of external evaluation organizations and sales is high in Europe and North America.
“If the game gets a high score, it can become a must-buy game, and possibly generate synergy with sales, so we are currently working hard to improve the quality of the game toward its sales for the holiday season.”
Takashi Lizuka, head of Sonic Team, said that he wants the new game to have the impact of Sonic Adventure:
“Sonic Adventure laid the foundation for 20 years of Sonic titles after its release, so in the same way I really hope that this new title releasing in 2022 lays the foundation for the following future Sonic titles—that is the idea behind the challenge for the team.”
These comments are in contrast to the ones made by Saber Interactive CEO Matthew Karch. Karch spoke about the launch of Evil Dead: The Game. He essentially said that the importance of Metacritic is on the wane. That game has sold 500,000 units in under a week, despite not boasting high review scores.
So there you have it. Different attitudes at different companies. Some people think scores are important, while others don’t.
