SEGA released a soft launch version of Sonic Runners early this morning in Japan and Canada, but those living in the U.S. and Europe are currently region blocked from downloading Sonic Team’s latest game.
However, SEGA of America’s customer service posted an update on the company’s website, providing some “clarification” on the matter.
In answering the question if Sonic Runners will ever be released in the U.S. or Europe, SEGA wrote, “Sonic Runners is a new mobile game developed by the Sonic Team in Japan. We are soft-launching it in select countries to see how the game does and to work out any bugs. No decision has been made yet whether it will be released in the US or Europe. It will depend on our observations during the soft-launch phase which could take several months.”
Obviously, SEGA will eventually release the game in both countries, and we assume it won’t take several months to test it out, but stranger things have happened.
If you don’t want to wait, there are ways to circumvent the region lock by downloading the APK directly and installing it onto your device (we’re working on a “how-to” article at the moment). Additionally, SEGA has listed a very small amount of Android devices that are compatible with Sonic Runners, but I was able to install the game on my Samsung Galaxy S5 and play it without any issues, despite it not being on the compatibility list.
