Tony Hawk has confirmed that Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 was planned but was ultimately cancelled once Activision Blizzard absorbed developer Vicarious Visions.
The professional skater himself confirmed the decision during a Twitch livestream with Andy Gentile, a former Neversoft designer (the studio that made the original Tony Hawk titles) and a senior designer on the 2020 Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 remake.
In response to whether THPS 3 + 4 was in the works, Hawk said: "That was the plan, even up until the release date of this [referring to THPS 1 + 2] and then Vicarious got, kind of, absorbed and then they were looking for other developers and then it was over."
After this, Activision reportedly attempted to get another studio to take over the project to no avail. "The truth of it is that they [Activision] were trying to find someone to do 3 and 4 but they just didn't really trust anyone like they did Vicarious," Hawk explained. "So they took other pitches from other studios: Like 'What would you do with the THPS title?' and they didn't like anything they heard – and that was it."
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 remasters were in the works but they were scrapped after Vicarious Visions was merged into Blizzard. 😔Source: Tony Hawk.https://t.co/84rlYDgvUQ pic.twitter.com/oWR70xTOYvJune 20, 2022
The Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series is highly revered by both critics and fans alike, with the 2020 remake achieving a 90 rating on Metacritic for PS5 as well as becoming the fastest-selling game in the franchise. It accumulated over one million copies sold within the first two weeks of release.
This clearly wasn't enough for Activision as after merging Vicarious Visions with Blizzard Entertainment to make Blizzard Albany, it confirmed that the developer will be focused on "existing Blizzard games and initiatives".
"I wish there was some way to bring it back," said Hawk. "Maybe when all the dust settles, we’ll figure it out. You never know. I would never have imagined we were going to do 1 + 2 20 years later."
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 is available to play across PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X / S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and Microsoft Windows. It's worth getting for the soundtrack alone.
Thankfully there are still plenty of other exciting games to look forward to with 2023 itself poised to be one of the biggest years in gaming history.
