Earlier today (March 16th, 2022), it was announced by Private Division, a publishing label of Take-Two Interactive Software, that they had signed a new publishing agreement with Evening Star. Evening Star is a development studio founded in late 2018 that is made up of many of the developers of Sonic Mania. Sonic Mania released in 2017, and had DLC released in 2018 prior to the studio being founded.
Why Not?
According to the post on Private Division’s website, the Evening Star game that they will publish is “an unannounced 3D action platformer utilizing their proprietary Star Engine.” That doesn’t sound like Sonic Mania at all, which was a 2D platformer. More importantly than that, though, is that Private Division almost certainly does not have the rights to release Sonic the Hedgehog games.
The Sonic the Hedgehog series is, of course, owned by Sega. While Sega has been giving the rights to publish games in their series to other publishers, it is hard to imagine that Sonic would be one of these series. It has happened in the past, but these circumstances are not particularly comparable.
Is there any hope?
There is the possibility that a sequel to Sonic Mania was worked on in tandem with this new “3D action platformer”, but it does not appear to be likely. According to their website, Evening Star’s development team isn’t particularly large, so it is hard to imagine them working on both games at the same time. It has been over four years since Sonic Mania came out, and considering its relative success, Sega likely would have approved development for a sequel shortly after launch if they were considering it. There was DLC, but there isn’t any indication that Sega has plans beyond that. As the DLC showed, Sonic Mania provided a good base for more content in the same style to be released, so one would expect a sequel to have released by now if it was in development.
The original Sonic Mania was easily one of the best executed games in the last decade, regardless of how you feel about 2D Sonic games. Unfortunately, there isn’t much reason to believe a sequel will release anytime soon. Still, anything is possible, and a surprise announcement would be greatly appreciated.
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