I'm not expecting anything from the AUs as they'll likely go for the standard stuff (Rule 63, role swap, etc).
I doubt they'll drop the ball, but I also doubt they'll be breaking any new ground either.
Both of those would still be breaking any new ground, genderswap Sonic stuff has been big for several years and Role Swap stuff is not a huge but it's still pretty big.
Genderswap stuff you can't really fuck up, it's still possible but it's relatively easy to get right because the concept is simple, the worst we could possibly get would be something like this.
But still, if they do to the concept there's a pretty big chance that it will be something with more effort put into it like Sonica for example.
Role Swap stuff is different tho, Fleetway with its mirror world shows how bad you can fuck up the concept, the idea of the Mirror World was that Sonic and Robotnik swapped so it's kind of an anti-universe in that regard.
The idea of Sonic being an evil king makes sense and is actually a pretty good use of the concept but they fuck it by having him still use robots (and ones that look like another antagonist of the comic, The Drakons at that) and having both Amy and Tails be against him for some reason.
They also don't even show the Kintobor (pre-transformation Robotnik aka good version of him) of the world which would have been really interesting to see.
The only interesting thing we see is that King Sonic's Super Form is actually a good guy which is pretty poetic to be honest, after all he is the main thing people care about in the continuity.
But that's enough of sperging about an old British comic book series that most people don't care about, the point was that Role Swapping is a concept that is easier to fuck.
But even the worse they could probably do is just something that's pretty shallow and mainly a joke which is probably what they're going to do but it's understandable because that's how it's mostly done.
But even still with those two examples, they would still be a lot better than a lot more generic concepts like having Sonic has a caveman where there isn't too much to them other than that core small idea.