Are Sega and Microsoft preparing something?

Tomorrow marks the start of this year's Tokyo Game Show. It will actually be opened by Microsoft this year; the platform holder has revealed that they are going to celebrate Japanese game development but not talk about the next generation. One thing many people expect to be announced, however, is some sort of collaboration between MS and Sega.

During the last month, the two companies have shared a lot of hints about each other. One of the hosts in the lastest Xbox stream had a Sonic t-shirt, the recently announced Shock Blue controller for Xbox Series X has Sonic themed colors (white, black and blue) while calling it "Still iconic" and the blue color on the controller is actually exactly the same as in the Sega logotype. And Sega themselves haven't been any less cryptic.

Last month they tweeted the image below with a plushie Sonic next to two green glasses with a black and white spoon (X and S?), and less than a week ago, they took a picture of an employee trying to hide a secret by holding arms in the shape of an X.

None of these things is particularly strange on their own, but combined... well, it sort of looks like smoke from a fire. Speculation is rife, with some thinking that Microsoft might be about to buy Sega (CEO Satya Nadella said yesterday that Microsoft is considering more purchases). We think that sounds unlikely though, as Sega owns a bunch of assets that probably wouldn't be too interesting to Microsoft.

We can't help but think that all of these hints are aimed towards something Sonic-related. If there is anything to this story, we're putting our money on some sort of collaboration re Sega's mascot, something like all the Sonic games coming to Xbox Game Pass and/or an exclusive Sonic game for PC and Xbox.

But what do we know?! Let's hear what you think about all this.