The Tony Hawk Pro skater franchise mainly dominated skateboarding video games for years. However, EA stepped in and tried their hand at the sport. The result was Skate; we’ve received three mainline installments for the IP. But we know a new game is in the works, and it will soon be available for playtesting on console platforms. So if you’ve been itching to join in on the fun PC players have already been experiencing, keep an eye out within your inbox. That’s, of course, if you already signed up to become a Skate Insider.
The update EA provided was brief, but enough to warn fans that a console playtest will be coming out. Right now, the focus of the EA blog post is just to alert fans of the progress made so far from the PC side of playtesting. On PC, the players that had been given the ability to playtest the game have allowed developers crucial feedback. There were several bugs and other technical issues that the development team was able to go in and fix. Meanwhile, this playtest also gave the team an inside look into where most players spend their time on the map.
Skate is all about riding around the city, pulling off incredible tricks, and having a chaotic blast with your friends. Developers have made a map called San Vansterdam, and it’s not finalized right now. Instead, the team made a testbed environment of the map to see how players are taking up with the environments crafted. For instance, you can see in the image above just where most of the players are actually gravitating towards. That should allow the developers enough information to tweak the rest of the finalized map to incorporate some of the more beloved hot spots of skating.
But as mentioned, right now, a group of Skate Insiders was granted access to playtest the PC build of the game. It’s noted later in the blog post that the developers are promising console playtesting is in the works. Unfortunately, there’s no date quite yet that they can share. So it’s best to sign up to be a Skate Insider if you haven’t already. Then you just have to check your inbox to see if you get an official invite once the developers are ready.
Currently, the next Skate game doesn’t have a release date attached just yet. However, we do know that once the game is released into the marketplace, it will have a free-to-play model. So expect some microtransactions to keep this game supported.
