EAhas announcedthat the next game in theskate.series is scheduled to drop into Early Access in 2025. This will be the first entry in the series sinceskate. 3in 2010. Shortly after, EA laid off most of the developer’s staff and shut down the studio. Last we heard, Deran Chung and Chris Parry who worked on the original run of games, are part of the team handling the newskate.
I haven’t really beenkeeping up with the developmentof the newskate.(which is apparently just calledskate.). I think I lost interest when it was announced that it would befree-to-play and multiplayerfocused. Actually, repeating that still sticks in my craw since my wish for a newskate.game did not include GaaS.
If you’re down for that sort of thing, EA has been holding playtests since 2022 to collect player feedback. The developer has said that there will be no loot boxes, no maps locked behind paywalls, and no pay-to-win. So, that’s maybe comforting, but that still leaves cosmetics as microtransactions. We’ll have to wait and see.
I loved theskate.series. I loveTony Hawk’s Pro Skater, as well, but they’re two completely different approaches to skateboarding.skate.feels a lot more authentic. You try and find the perfect line to build the most gnar gnar combo possible. The stick-flicking controls gave everything a more tactile feel.
But really, I have no interest in a live service multi-player game. Thankfully, I still have the original three games on PS3, so I can always turn to them. They’ve aged well.
skate.is coming to early access on 2025. More details to come.
