Skate 4 has been a hot-button topic among extreme sports fans for years. Though the iconic skateboarding franchise has had a lot less influence in the wake of the disastrous THPS 5, it looks like it’s about to come roaring back. Some new footage has leaked, showing off a very rough version of the game. The footage shows the basics of skating for the early development title, and it reinforces a core idea of the franchise, the skating has to feel good.
Grubb himself said the footage matched what he’d heard from his sources on the current state of the game. “They’re trying to get the feel right,” he claimed. “Which is probably the most important aspect of a Skate game. To me, this is all exciting. It looks like the emphasis is on the fluidity of the animation, and it seems like EA is making good on its desire to give all its devs ample time to prototype.”
The footage is claimed to be pre-alpha footage of the newly planned sequel. The leak comes from journalist and personality Jeff Grubb, who has been a source of various leaks before. The footage is pretty simple, showing off a pretty featureless cityscape with a skater in it, doing some basic tricks. What impact this will have upon launch is not yet known, but they can’t possibly screw it up as bad as other genre entries.
Let’s look a bit at the history of Skate to see what I mean. The franchise only went upward from its early days. The first game in the series sold around 1 million copies on PS3 and Xbox 360. Later games rocketed up from there. Skate 3 set a new high mark, selling a combined 4.7 million units on the same platforms, only a few years after the launch of the first game. That massive upswing in popularity was owed due to both the smooth skating feel, as well as expanded mode selections. Released as a direct sequel to the other cult classic entry in the franchise, Skate 3 brought much more to the table when it was first released in 2010.
Contrast that with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5, which sold less than 400,000 units across 4 platforms. A big reason for this was just how empty that game felt, but also a complete lack of that true skating feel. Hopefully, we’ll get a more substantial update on their progress soon.
