Popverse's top stories

• Summer 2026 is getting started already - we have the Florida Supercon 2026 dates!
• Why have a family vacation from hell when you could read one instead with Jennifer Thorne's Diavola? [If It Bleeds, We Read]
• Marvel Studios veterans are teaming up to bring 2000 AD icon Judge Dredd to the big screen one more time

Sega has had a rough string of luck the past few years. So much so that Sega President Shuji Utsumi considers his main job to be “reviving” the video game company. Part of that is making better games, sure, but part of that is also rebuilding their most iconic character’s brand. That is why Sega is giving free reign of Sonic the Hedgehog to Rovio, the company behind Angry Birds.

This bit of news came from an interview following Summer Games Fest 2025. During the interview, Utsumi laid out how he plans to make Sega a major player in the video game industry again. Part of that is focusing on mobile games and the Games As A Service (GAAS) model, which is where Rovio, the Angry Birds developer that Sega acquired back in 2023, comes in.

“Rovio has deep knowledge of the global mobile business, and very strong IP with Angry Birds,” Utsumi said. “We feel like the fit between Rovio and Sega is good. We are working closely with Rovio to have a Sonic mobile game, and we are giving them access to IPs, including Sonic, to come up with nice, welcoming GAAS titles.”

So it isn’t just that you might see Sonic popping into an Angry Birds update soon; Rovio has apparently been given the green light to develop a Sonic the Hedgehog mobile game from scratch, incorporating the GAAS model that so many developers are desperate to crack. Done well, these kinds of titles can be a huge asset to companies, bringing in a constant revenue stream through frequent updates, but it is still questionable how well Sonic would fit in such a model.

You don't need to beat the game to prepare for the next one—here are all the major new and upcoming games coming our way.