Leaked Sonic Racing Crossover officially unveiled, bringing Nickelodeon stars to the track
Following ‘negative leaks’, Nickelodeon and Sega announce their Sega Racing: CrossWorlds partnership
Nickelodeon and Sega have officially confirmed their Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds collaboration, following leaks on social media earlier this month.
Announced at the 2025 Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards on Saturday, CrossWorlds will feature characters from the SpongeBob SquarePants universe, as well as a SpongeBob SquarePants-themed vehicle and track.
In addition, the pair teased future Nickelodeon-themed content from the Avatar universe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
The Nickelodeon characters will be included in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds’ Digital Deluxe Edition, or separately via a Season Pass, which will also include the recently announced Minecraft content, characters from Netflix series Sonic Prime, and “two more yet-to-be-announced collaborations”.
Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds will be released on September 25 on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and PC. A Switch 2 version of the game has also been confirmed for a later date.
Just days before Summer Game Fest, a number of leaks of apparent Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds footage appeared online, seemingly confirming characters that had yet to be announced.
The head of Sonic Team later shared his views on the leaking of game content, in an interview with VGC, saying it has the potential to ruin licensing deals.
“In the event that you’re dealing with licensed content, sometimes that leak will destroy a deal, and now you can’t do some stuff because someone leaked something,” he said.
“We realise a lot of people really, really want to know immediately all this great, cool, fun stuff. But ultimately when people leak they’re ruining the plans and potentially ruining the content, and we’d really like people to think about that and maybe not do this kind of negative stuff so much.”
In a recent hands-on preview, VGC called Crossworlds a “genuine contender” to this year’s karting crown, going up against Nintendo‘s Mario Kart World.
“Karting games on Nintendo formats are usually ranked with the caveat ‘if you don’t count Mario Kart’, but CrossWorlds has the potential to provide players with a viable alternative that not only embraces some of the features left behind by Nintendo’s latest – the no-nonsense arcade racing, the addition of characters from other series, car customisation – but also promises to continually update itself more than Nintendo’s game might, ensuring it could remain fresh for quite some time.”
