Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds was released on September 25, 2025, and received positive reviews. In an interview, series producer Takanashi Iizuka and CrossWorlds producer Ryuichi Taki explained why crossplay was necessary for them, despite the complexity of implementation.
"The Sonic series has always strived to support multiplatform", Iizuka noted. "Even our regular action games allow you to play on different platforms, including PC and Switch. But crossplay turned out to be many times more difficult." Previously, Sonic Team had not been able to implement crossplay in racing games, although games like Team Sonic Racing (2019) were released on all major platforms. An important decision was to collaborate with Sega's arcade division and use their network technologies.
Taki added that crossplay was important for fair matchmaking. Online matches often suffer from a small number of players, which causes beginners to face experienced players, which spoils the fun. Crossplay expands the pool of participants, providing fairer competition.
The most difficult task for the team was to coordinate performance on different devices. Each platform was individually optimized so that players received the same experience and visual quality.
"If you play simultaneously on Xbox and PlayStation, you will hardly notice the difference", Taki noted. Thanks to this, CrossWorlds became the longest racing game in the series to develop.
