Sonic The Hedgehog (2006)

Sonic the Hedgehog (commonly known to as Sonic '06) is a 2006 platform game developed by Sonic Team and published by Sega. It was produced in commemoration of the Sonic series' 15th anniversary, and intended as a reboot for the seventh-generation video game consoles. Players control Sonic, Shadow, and the new character Silver, who battle Solaris, an ancient evil pursued by Doctor Eggman. Each playable character has his own campaign and abilities, and must complete levels, explore hub worlds and fight bosses to advance the story. In multiplayermodes, players can work cooperatively to collect Chaos Emeralds or race to the end of a level. Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) was delisted on Xbox 360 in October of 2010 in a move by Sega to “clear the air” ahead of the release of Sonic Colors, Sonic Free Riders, and Sonic the Hedgehog 4. Jurgen Post, Sega’s SVP of the EMEA announced at the time that “any Sonic game with an average Metacritic has been de-listed. We have to do this and increase the value of the brand. This will be very important when more big Sonic releases arrive in the future”.

He continued, “we could make a lot of money on back-catalogue Sonic titles, but let’s keep the number of Sonic games available under control. Otherwise you can have cannibalisation. If there are ten Sonic games on the shelves, with people seeing Sonic Rush DS or Sonic Rush Adventure, this may not help our overall strategy.”

In this case, delisted meant both digital and physical with several Sonic releases reportedlybecoming difficult to find at retail around this time. These included Sonic and the Secret Rings, Sonic and the Black Knight, Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity, and potentially other older releases. Only a few Sonic titles released on consoles were available digitally up to this point and we have not yet found evidence that any others were removed from sale alongside Sonic 2006. Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) was unexpectedly relisted shortly after the delisting of several older Sonic titles on May 20th, 2022. We first noticed the game’s return to the Xbox 360 marketplace on May 24th and it has returned to all major territories.