Sonic Frontiers marks the series’ first foray into open world territory. For this reason, many fans have been curious as to what the next Sonic title would be like since it was formally revealed at the Game Awards. As players awaited new information, leaks surfaced, and many of these leaks made a note to mention that in the game’s more linear portions, the gameplay remained 3D throughout.

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As part of an interview with Video Games Chronicle, it seems that fans now have an answer as to why this is the case. Takashi Iizuka, the current head of Sonic Team, has stated that putting both the 2D and 3D play styles together “to make everyone happy doesn’t really work.” Instead of putting them together as seen in previous releases, Iizuka states that now it’s a matter of “delivering the game formats that people want.”

From what Iizuka claims in the interview with VGC, it seems that Sonic Team decided to follow this approach after how 2017 faired for the Sonic franchise. The leader of the team states that despite Sonic Forces’ mixed reception, it was a year that the series released both a 2D and 3D title, and “everyone was happy.” This appears to be Sonic Team’s strategy going forward, as Iizuka also states replicating this strategy is why Sonic Origins and Sonic Frontiers are coming out in the same year.

It’s understandable as to why this was the lesson learned from Forces and Mania’s double release that year, as even though Forces didn’t sell too well, Mania was incredibly well-received. With both games, it served as a rather good year for Sonic. Even when some players weren’t satisfied with Forces, they had Mania to fall back on.

However, this begs the question as to just what will come next after Sonic Origins. If this truly is the strategy of the franchise going forward, there needs to be something to match the 2D side of Sonic coming next after the collection releases this June. The developers of Sonic Mania have mostly moved on, and Sonic Team has stated that there’s no Mania 2 in the works. It seems that fans will just need to wait and see how this strategy plays out for Sonic going forward.

MORE: Sonic Fans Should Expect Even More News By the End of JuneSource: VGC