Activision killed a Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 remake
According to Tony Hawk himself, the remake was in the works but was canned following the Vicarious Visions / Blizzard merger.
You really can’t have anything nice in this day and age. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 was a hit with both fans and critics. The 2021 remake of the first two Pro Skater games became the fastest-selling game in the Tony Hawk’s franchise. That means that Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 was basically guaranteed, right?
Unfortunately, it wasn’t. andyTHPS (AKA Andy Gentile, a senior designer at THPS 1 + 2 developer Vicarious Visions) recently played the game on stream with Tony Hawk himself coming on as a guest. It seems that now that Vicarious Visions has fully merged with Blizzard, the future of the Tony Hawk’s series is even further in question. Hawk elaborated:
I wish I could say that we had something in the works, but Vicarious Visions kinda got disbanded and Activision’s going through all their stuff. So I don’t know what’s next.
Tony Hawk, pro skater
Why Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 was shelved
You already know that Activision’s in a lot of hot water right now, and rightfully so. With all the furor around the working conditions at Activision Blizzard, the way QA testers are treated at Raven Software, and the controversy surrounding the Microsoft buyout, the cancellation of THPS 3 + 4 is quaint by comparison. But it represents how little Activision seems to understand about its audience and what they’re looking for.
When Gentile asked about THPS 3 + 4, Hawk confirmed that it was in the works following THPS 1 + 2. Unfortunately, Activision killed those plans when they merged Vicarious Visions with Blizzard:
Even up until the release date of this, we were going 3 and 4. And then Vicarious got kinda absorbed, and then they were looking for other developers, and then it was over. […] They [Activision] were trying to find someone to do 3 + 4, but they just didn’t really trust anyone the way they did Vicarious. So they took other pitches from studios — like, “what would you do with the THPS title?” And they didn’t like anything they heard, and then that was it.
Tony Hawk, pro skater
What do you think of this news? Are you still wishing for Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 to be revived? Let us know!
Via Kotaku.
