The creative team behind Electronic Arts‘ new Skate game revealed more details today, including the name, and the plans to make skate. a free to play live service game.
Titled skate., this latest entry in the series is taking a much different direction than past instalments of the franchise. As creative director Chris “Cuz” Parry stated in a meeting about the project, “This isn’t a sequel. It’s not a remake. It’s not a reboot, a prequel; it’s not any of that. It’s not a remake or a remaster, whatever ‘re’ you can do. This is it, it’s skate. We’re in this for the long haul.”
EA and Full Circle announced that skate. (stylized with lowercase s and period) will be a free-to-play title for Windows PC, PlayStation, and Xbox platforms and will feature cross-play and cross-platform progression. A mobile version of the upcoming skateboarding game is also in development. The developers did not announce when the game may see its release, stating that it would be released “when it’s ready.”
The team also detailed that the game will have microtransactions, but they will be largely cosmetic. It seems games like Apex Legends will be inspiration for the monetization efforts, and the purchasable items will be used to fund the continued development of the project.
Full Circle head of product management Isabelle Mocquard explained, “we are taking inspiration from games like Apex Legends, or other popular titles that are free to play, where spending money is totally optional, and it’s mostly about cosmetics and convenience. With such a model, we’ll be able to keep the community united between the players who decide to spend and those who don’t. And that means that those social connections, those friendships made in-game, can flourish without splitting our audience.”
Mocquard further explained that “We have the ambition to keep supporting skate. for years to come. From the very inception of skate., the development team knew we wanted to create something different. Our vision was not a game that you’d play through and ‘beat,’ but something that you can regularly come back to and discover new things. Our dream is that skate. never ends. And in order to do that, we’ll be actively supporting skate. with new gameplay elements and tweaks, new content releases and events, and lots of seasonal drops.”
Skate is an extremely fun and engrossing video game series that continues to capture the hearts of many fans even up to this day! The first instalment was released in 2006, and was developed by EA’s Black Box studio. This studio later merged into EA Canada, and eventually shut down completely in 2013.
While a ways away from being finished, fans that are eager to get their hands on this latest entry in the series can sign up to be an Insider and playtesting skate. can visit the official website.
