So I saw this on Joystiq this morning, but after clicking through all of the "we saw this on this other site" links it traces back to a UK game site called DarkZero, who apparently did some actual listening during Activision's quarterly earnings call and discovered that the company is giving Tony Hawk the year off.
Some people are taking this opportunity to mention EA's Skate, which was able to enter the skateboarding genre and clean up in its first year, while the Tony Hawk series has been shambling on like a zombie for awhile now. Personally, my first reaction was one of abject stokedness, which isn't even a word!
As a longtime Tony Hawk player, I've thought that the series has needed some more-serious changes for awhile now. I don't think any of the games have been bad, but every year certain things just started to feel more and more tired. Sure, the game delivered a large, mostly-new world to skate in every year, but the handful of new mechanics introduced every year always fall a little flat. Don't get me wrong, I liked Nail the Trick, but the last huge and 100% successful game-changing thing to happen to Tony Hawk was the addition of the revert. And that was added in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3.
Hopefully giving Neversoft an additional year will return the series to its former glory. Also, hopefully Neversoft isn't just looking at EA's game and thinking of ways to emulate it. I thought Skate was a good first entry that provided a different take on skateboarding, but it'd be a shame to see the leader-to-follower transition happen that fast.
I think I already know the answer to this question, but do you still care about Tony Hawk? Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one left.
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