After releasing a new Tony Hawk game every year between 1999 and 20007 (Pro Skater, Pro Skater 2, Pro Skater 3, Pro Skater 4, Underground, Underground 2, American Wasteland, Project 8, Proving Ground), Neversoft took a break from the franchise to work on Guitar Hero and Call of Duty: Ghosts, before being absorbed by Infinity Ward last month.
In the latest issue of Game Informer, Neversoft Co-Founder Joel Jewett, who is currently taking a break from games development after two decades, was asked if he thought annualizing the Tony Hawk franchise ultimately hurt the brand:
I disagree with that. It’s hard to catch lightning in a bottle, and if you do, you just wanna run. The world’s going to change. Like right now, is skateboarding as popular as it was at that time? No. I just think you wanna have fun, work hard, and capitalize on it if you have something like that.
Jewett added:
When we quit making the Tony Hawk games, you essentially hit a point in time where our games split the market with Skate, and the market had actually shrunk by then. People had been there, done that – they’re looking for something new. If you were trying to make something last forever, the world changes. We could’ve tried to make it last forever and we would’ve made, like, four games, and it would have had the same lifespan.
Jewett didn’t talk about what the future may hold for the Tony Hawk franchise, but in a Reddit AMA this past May, Hawk himself did say, “There is a CHANCE of something in the future for newer consoles.”
Elsewhere in the Game Informer interview, Jewett discussed a new first-person shooter Neversoft was working on between Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock and Call of Duty: Ghosts that never made it:
We worked on a first-person shooter [after Warriors of Rock and before Ghosts]. Let me put it this way, and I think I can say it: We worked on a first-person shooter during that period of time, and hindsight behind 20/20, I think it was freaking awesome and we did some killer work. There are other people out there that would corroborate that. I think it would be cool if people knew more about it… that’s all.
Would you want a new Tony Hawk game for consoles? Or are you happy with just OlliOlli (which should hit PS4 and PS3 soon)?
[Source: Game Informer via GameSpot]
