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The skateboarding genre will never again boast the power it enjoyed in the last decade, EA CEO John Riccitiello has claimed.
When it comes to action sports, I think that’s going to be an ongoing exciting genre," Riccitiello told Kotaku. But at least for the level of excitement out there, skateboarding seems to have run its course as the representative example in that broader genre.”
The exec’s statement comes despite EA’s success in capturing what was once a genre controlled solely by one brand – Tony Hawk.
The arrival of EA’s Skate in 2007, however, managed to shift the balance. Having been on the go for close to a decade by that point, the might Tony Hawk’s was starting to show its age.
The arrival of EA’s game, complete with innovative twin-stick analogue control, was enough to seal Hawk’s fate – though Skate has never managed to match the popularity of Hawk as his prime.
Activision’s subsequent reinvention of the brand via Tony Hawk’s Ride, which shipped with an expensive skateboard peripheral, hasn’t delivered the expected rebirth, and sales of the series’ most recent entry Shred have struggled from the off.
