Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds launched on September 25, 2025, and earned broadly positive reviews. In a recent interview, series producer Takanashi Iizuka and CrossWorlds producer Ryuichi Taki explained why cross-play was indispensable to them, despite the considerable implementation challenges.
“The Sonic series has always aimed to support multiple platforms,” Iizuka said. “Even our standard action titles let players across PC and Switch play together. But building cross-play for a racing game turned out to be exponentially more difficult.” Sonic Team had previously been unable to deliver cross-play in its racing entries, even though titles like Team Sonic Racing (2019) released on all major platforms. A pivotal choice was to partner with Sega’s arcade division and adopt their networking technology.
Taki added that cross-play was crucial for fair matchmaking. Online lobbies can suffer from low player counts, which often forces newcomers to face seasoned competitors and diminishes the enjoyment. Cross-play enlarges the player pool, improving balance and providing more equitable matchups.
The toughest challenge for the team was equalizing performance across a range of devices. Each platform received bespoke optimization so players would experience consistent performance and visual fidelity.
“If you race on Xbox and PlayStation at the same time, you’ll hardly notice a difference,” Taki noted. As a result, CrossWorlds became the longest-developed racing entry in the series.
Source: iXBT.games