Sonic Frontiers was originally meant to launch last year to celebrate the Sonic series' 30th anniversary, but Sega decided to delay its arrival in order to improve the game.
News of the game's belated arrival comes as part of Sega's recent December investor Q&A, where the company discussed the upcoming release of Sonic Frontiers among a number of other focal points.
When asked whether or not Sonic Frontiers would be an open-world kind of concept, Sega explained that fans would need to wait a little longer for further details, however, the publisher was keen to state that it won't be compromising on quality when it comes to the game's release.
"Originally it was planned to be released on this year, the 30th anniversary of Sonic," explained Sega in its response, "but we have postponed the release for a year in order to further brush up the quality.
"Not only for this title, but during the development phase, we have been steadily conducting analysis to improve the quality of the title before release, such as introducing game testing based on external evaluations, and I have a feeling that it will become a good game and have high expectations for it."
In addition to discussing the studio's quality-focused approach to development, Sega also briefly spoke about the game's pricing. As part of a wider response to the company's sales strategy, Sega explained that it will be looking to maintain the price of Sonic Frontiers by making sure that the value of the Sonic IP is high.
In doing so, the company is looking to avoid a situation where it lowers the price at an early stage after launch in order to increase unit sales - a strategy that is sometimes deployed by companies if a title lacks quality upon launch and its initial sales reception is poor.
Sonic Frontiers is currently targeting a late 2022 release. For more on the game, make sure to check out this piece detailing everything around the game's announcement.
Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.