During a livestream dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the Sonic franchise, Sonic the Hedgehog Chief Brand Officer Ivo Gerscovich was asked what the strategy is for the future of the franchise.

Our strategy really is pretty simple in terms of Sonic. It's really about focusing on the core games and the gameplay as you saw tonight. That's number one. But two, it's not only making a game, but also turning him into an entertainment icon.

How do you do that? We're working a film, which will come out with Sony and the Producer of The Fast and Furious Neal Moritz... We're working on a game and I can't say too much more... But also the mobile games, Sonic Dash has two hundred million downloads.

We got season two of the TV series that we've just shown a little bit of a global sneak peak. We have six arcade machines that are coming out, consumer products... we've got all kinds of great looking limited edition stuff [...] We have got cool collaborations like with Sanryo as you saw, and some mashups. We're really spending a lot of time on the product side too.

Also in the theme park space, I can't talk too much yet, but there are some things brewing that hopefully we can talk about in the not so distant future, that I think the fans will really like.

The mention of a game is certainly interesting. While Sega announced Sonic Mania today, the way Gerscovich worded it could indicate that there is something else on top of that in the pipeline. We'll have to wait and see on that.