Sonic Rumble delayed indefinitely one week before expected launch

Sega and Rovio’s Sonic Rumble has been further delayed just one week before its planned launch.

After having been rescheduled from winter to spring with a May 8th release date, the 32-player battle royale title has been delayed indefinitely to give Sega more time to work on developing more new features that may "fundamentally reshape the game".

Postponing the global rollout has come despite more than 1.4 million people pre-registering for Sonic Rumble, having expected it to launch next week.

Less than Sonic speed?

Despite the delay, the Sonic Rumble team still intends to launch Version 1.2 in the game’s soft launch territories with new features like unique character skills, group-based crews and the competitive Rumble Ranking.

The team is hoping to get feedback on these additions from early access players, with more details to be shared in the coming days.

"These upcoming changes will fundamentally reshape the game, and one thing has become clear: We want to create a game that evolves and stays fun for months and years to come," the Sonic Rumble team said.

"To build the kind of high-quality, long-lasting Sonic game our players deserve, we need more time.  As a result, we've decided to postpone the global launch. We know this news may be disappointing, and it wasn't a decision we made lightly. We at Sega share that disappointment, especially because we're making this call so close to the launch timing we had originally hoped for.

"However, we believe taking this extra time is the right choice for the future of Sonic Rumble. We don't have a new release date to share yet, but as soon as we get closer, we'll update you through our social media and community channels."

After the previous delay, Rovio, head of beacon growth, Veli Kiviaho assured us in an interview that postponing the game to spring hadn’t been a result of any "big issues" but was more a case of responding to early access feedback. This resulted in the dev adding new features like Quick Rumble to improve accessibility for busy players.

"There’s also some optimisation to do," Kiviaho said at the time. "High-end devices play well and the game looks beautiful, but there is still some work to do to get the mid-tier devices running it smoothly."

Whether further optimisation is still required or the latest delay is entirely the result of fine-tuning new features is currently uncertain.