Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds Season 2 Will Bring a “Very Large” Update to the Game’s Specifications

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds Season 2 is apparently going to change considerably more than the character and collaboration lineup.

Creative director Masaru Kohayakawa says the game will receive a “very large update” to its specifications during Season 2, with the first details due at the upcoming Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds World Championship. The comment comes from a new Sonic Channel staff profile of Kohayakawa published today.

Kohayakawa did not reveal what parts of CrossWorlds will actually change, but he made a point of separating the update from the collaborations already driving much of Season 2.

“We’re also making a very large update to the game’s specifications.”

There are still unannounced collaborations on the way as well. SEGA has already revealed Godzilla and EVANGELION as the first two paid Season 2 crossover packs, while Bayonetta will join as a free racer. Season Pass Two contains six crossover packs in total, leaving four of those collaborations still to be revealed.

We will not have to wait long to find out what that means. Kohayakawa says the details will be announced at the World Championship on October 10 in Japan, corresponding with the Year Two Showcase scheduled for October 9 at 4:00 PM ET. The World Championship Finals broadcast begins earlier that day at 12:00 PM ET before moving into the dedicated Year Two presentation.

The same profile also fills in some of the thinking behind features already in CrossWorlds. According to Kohayakawa, the extensive rival dialogue was actually proposed by members of the development team, who wanted to hear interactions between characters that had never spoken to one another before. Both Kohayakawa and Takashi Iizuka initially struggled with the scale of the idea, but the team’s enthusiasm won them over and the dialogue was ultimately implemented across the roster.

Sonic City previously covered the rival system and its character-specific banter shortly before the game launched. Kohayakawa now says that despite the work involved, he feels they were right to go through with it.

There is a new bit of Project ONSOKU lore in the column too. Kohayakawa explains that Yunosuke’s “Jet Black” was built around an unseen “what if” scenario involving Hatsune Miku and Shadow. The idea imagines the two facing one another just before Shadow appeared during the original CrossWorlds reveal at The Game Awards 2024, with the song’s pre-race tension also reflecting the moment immediately before Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds itself was unveiled.

That backstory was never part of SEGA’s original release information when “Jet Black” launched as Project ONSOKU’s third song, making it a new piece of context for the collaboration.

For the immediate future, though, the big question is what exactly Kohayakawa means by changing the game’s “specifications.” With the full Season 2 reveal now only a couple of days away, that answer should arrive alongside the next batch of CrossWorlds collaborations.

Stay tuned to Sonic City for more Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds News and Updates!