In a new interview, SEGA executive Osamu Ohasi said that he would like Sonic to surpass Mario.
Osamu Ohasi is currently the manager of SEGA’s 2nd Business Department, which is in charge of the Sonic franchise. In an interview courtesy of sega.co.jp (translated by NoisyPixel), Ohasi said that he wanted Sonic “to surpass Mario” when asked about the plans to grow Sonic in the future.
“Simply put, I want to surpass Mario. Sonic was a game originally developed to compete with Mario, and we have yet to achieve that. Because we respect Mario, my goal is to catch up to and surpass him”, he said.
Ohasi continued, “We want Sonic to be played all over the world, including Japan, just like Mario, and we want the movie to be a bigger hit than Mario. We also want to build a Sonic attraction in Universal Studios Japan. That is my goal as a Sonic lover.”
Ohasi’s ambitions are certainly high and although his goals remain to be seen, the numbers suggest that SEGA will have a tremendous battle moving forward.
In some basic comparisons alone, the latest The Super Mario Bros. Movie accumulated $1.36 billion at the box office, whereas the two Sonic the Hedgehog movies only generated $725 million combined. On the video game side, Mario is currently the best-selling video game franchise of all time, with more than 830 million copies of games sold.
The latest Sonic game, Sonic Superstars, is now available for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store.
Do you think Sonic will eventually surpass Mario? Let us know in the comments below.
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