Last year, SEGA revealed Sonic Frontiers – a new Sonic adventure taking place in an expansive world. Some fans may be wondering why it took such a long time for the company to finally lift the lid on a new game, and the company has finally spoken on the matter.

In its latest investor briefing, SEGA officially shared that Sonic Frontiers was actually targeting a 2021 release originally. However, SEGA then postponed the title in order to ensure its quality before release. The company then added that it also had “high expectations” for the game.

Here’s the full excerpt below:

Q: Looking at the video, “SONIC FRONTIERS” looks like an open world kind of concept. Is that correct? Also, if you have any target number of sales, can you please share?

A: As for target number, because this is a completely new title for the first time in many years, and we are planning for a global multi-platform roll-out, we would like to go beyond the first year sales number of “SONIC FORCES”, which is the previous title. For lifetime sales, we look forward to further increase.

We’d like for you to wait future announcement for the details, but this is the title with no compromise in terms of quality and that has taken on many new challenges. Originally it was planned to be released [in 2021], the 30th anniversary of Sonic, but we have postponed the release for a year in order to further brush up the quality. Not only for this title, but during the development phase, we have been steadily conducting analysis to improve the quality of the title before release, such as introducing game testing based on external evaluations, and I have a feeling that it will become a good game and have high expectations for it.

Sonic Frontiers is currently slated for a Holiday 2022 release window. We’ll report back if we hear more in the future