Sonic Team's most recent game in the long-running franchise, Sonic Frontiers, has surpassed the last peak record of concurrent players on the Steam platform. After a five-year gap since the last mainline 3D Sonic game, Sonic Forces, Sonic Frontiers is finally in the hands of players. While the franchise's first foray into an open-world setting was seen as an ambitious step, it left some fans worried about its transition. With the game gradually being revealed over the year, impressions were much brighter than when it was first revealed in June.
While critical reception of the game is mixed, many fans have had a more positive reaction. This includes praise for the Sonic Frontiers' exploration, sense of speed, and storytelling, while there have been criticisms for some technical aspects such as the pop-in or gameplay loop. Despite these negatives, the game is becoming one of the more beloved Sonic games in recent memory – so much so that the peak of Sonic Frontiers' concurrent players has surpassed the franchise's previous record.
SteamDB is a database for Valve's platform, where it provides analytics and other information about the games sold on it. These include charts regarding the number of players that have been concurrently playing at one time. According to this website, Sonic Frontiers has managed to hit over 19,000 concurrent players, right at the time of its release. In comparison, the last peak record was set by Sonic Mania 5 years ago, with a concurrent peak of nearly 12,000 players.
This is quite an impressive number for the game, especially considering the critical and fan reception of Sonic Mania being much higher than the previous 3D Sonic game. It's likely due to the surrounding hype of Sonic Frontiers that the general fan reaction is quite positive right now. This is even evident with the Steam rating, which contains reviews that have been left by users of the Steam platform. While critics have been mixed on the game, the reviews on Steam for Sonic Frontiers have been overwhelmingly positive, with more glowing and positive reviews than negative ones.
While there is quite a bit that the developers of Sonic Frontiers can improve upon for the next game, many fans and critics note this is a good step in the right direction for the blue hedgehog. Many are hoping that with this new bar that is set by Frontiers, Sonic Team and Sega can use the feedback given to refine the formula and make it better.
Sonic Frontiers is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.