SEGA executive Osamu Ohashi recently revealed that he wants to see Sonic surpass Mario in popularity one day.
Ohashi revealed this information in an interview on SEGA’s recruitment website. If you’re interested in SEGA games, you can check out our other articles here.
SEGA wants Sonic to surpass Mario in popularity
Speaking in a recent interview on SEGA’s recruitment website, Osamu Ohashi said that while SEGA respects Mario, he would like to take over the Nintendo mascot’s position one day.
Osamu Ohashi joined SEGA in 1993 and now serves as a manager at SEGA 2nd Division in charge of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise.
“Simply put, we want to surpass Mario,” said Ohashi. “Sonic is a game that was originally developed to compete with Mario and still hasn’t achieved that goal. Since we respect Mario, our goal is to catch up and also surpass him.”
Ohashi added, “I want Sonic to be played by many people around the world, including Japan, just like Mario. I want this movie to be even more successful than Mario. I want Universal Studios Japan to make a Sonic area as well. That’s our goal for those who love Sonic.”
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is the most successful video game movie adaptation of all time with $1.3 billion in box office revenue. Meanwhile, the movie Sonic the Hedgehog 2 grossed US$405 million worldwide at the box office.
Recent reports from SEGA and Nintendo revealed that over 832 million copies of Mario games have been sold, while Sonic games have “sold” 1.5 billion copies, but this includes free-to-play games such as mobile games.