New Sonic the Hedgehog Announcements Delayed

Earlier this year, before it was summarily cancelled in the wake of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, SXSW was set to play host to a number of different announcements and events. That includes, but is not limited to, a panel featuring some teased announcements from the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. Once the show was cancelled, it was announced that the expected panel would instead come to folks “in a new format” during April. Well, it’s April 15th now, and a new update indicates that the rescheduled panel information has been delayed once more.

“[W]e know delays are way past not cool,” the official Twitter account shared earlier today. “But with the world in its current state, and to keep our teams safe, we need to wait to show you our SXSW content until things have settled.”

As for what, exactly, these sort of announcements or reveals might be, there’s no telling at this point. A sequel to the popular movie, which released earlier this year, has not yet been announced, and 2017 was the last time a truly meaty, mainline Sonic video game released with Sonic Mania. There’s no way that Sega hasn’t been working on something to serve as a proper followup to that, and an announcement hot on the heels of the movie would have been a smart play. For now, we wait.

What sort of Sonic the Hedgehog announcements do you think are being delayed here? Could we potentially see the official announcement of a movie sequel? Let us know in the comments, or hit me up directly on Twitter at @rollinbishop to talk all things gaming!

While there have been a number of different Sonic the Hedgehog spinoff titles and mobile games of late, the last “mainline” release was 2017’s Sonic Mania, which was received incredibly well. Sonic the Hedgehog, the movie, is now available to purchase on digital with a physical Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD release set for May 19th. The film stars Ben Schwartz as the voice of the eponymous hedgehog, James Marsden as Tom Wachowski, a police officer that befriends Sonic, and Jim Carrey as Dr. Robotnik, the franchise’s classic villain and scientist. You can check out all of our previous coverage of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise here.