Sonic will live on Next-Gen

Everybody is talking about the next generation of consoles and SEGA are no different. It might seem like a no-brainer that Sonic the Hedgehog will make the jump to new consoles, but in what manner? Given that Sonic the Hedgehog 06 was such a beautiful game at the time that it led quite a few people to buy a 360 (talk about a let-down), could next generation have a similarly beautiful game (but hopefully without the crippling glitches)?

Speaking with Eurogamer, SEGA's Takashi Iizuka gave us a hint of what could be to come.

"I don't think Sonic will ever become photo-real," Iizuka said. "I think Sonic will always remain stylized and will have that bright, colorful world. What the high hardware spec will allow us to do is make that more convincing. By having higher end hardware…we'll be able to do, for example, the real-time lighting calculations. That will give more presence to Sonic. We're not after realism. We're after making it more convincing."

"The Wii was an extremely successful platform. It was totally global. It went into the families that maybe would not have picked up a home console before. It created that living room experience with families, and it had great success."

"Adding the controller [for the Wii U]," he continued, "and in a sense upgrading the Wii, it has got potential to further that and increase its customer base. I feel Sonic is the right fit because it is that kind of family experience game. I do feel Wii U is applicable to Sonic, but how we will apply using the controller to Sonic is something we're still thinking about at the moment."

This is further to Iizuka's comments on evolving the 3D Sonic games.