A portion of a PocketGamer interview with Takashi Iizuka...

PG: Sonic is still hugely popular, but Sonic games of the last several years have been less well received than those from, say, 15 years ago. Why do you think that is?

TI: So originally it was more or less the same team working on all the different Sonic titles, but after a few years, for various reasons, we started to delegate Sonic games to different groups of people.

And everyone in the office has their own idea of what Sonic should be, so we started to see slightly varied, slightly different directions of Sonic games.

I was conscious of this, so I'm now back with full responsibility of all things Sonic. I have control over the direction of not just Sonic Generations, but all the Sonic titles that we will develop in the future.

So I have more control, and hopefully this will provide better appearances for future titles.

PG: What's next for Sonic?

TI: Sonic Generations sort of acts as the end of one period. After Sonic Generations, we will work on new Sonic titles. There's going to be a whole new adventure, of course.

For the digital and mobile space, we have Sonic 4 - Episode 1 is already out, and we've already started creating Episode 2.

We're going to continue to explore the reimaginationing of classic Sonic, but at the same time we will also keep looking into the gaming space around modern Sonic games.