Skate 4 will have more community and social features, confirm two of the game's directors. EA surprised fans last week by announcing a new Skate game as part of its EA Play event, but did not say when the game would be available.
Speaking to Jemkem Magazine, Skate Creative Director Chris "Cuz" Parry and Game Director Deran Chung offered a little more information about the new Skate game. The developers said that they were "pretty ahead of the curve back in the day with our social features" and that the new game will be "an evolution of all those things." The Skate developers also expect the community around the game to be "huge" as the community that played the other three Skate games have kept on making content.
One well-known member of the Skate community is the controversial YouTuber PewDiePie. PewDiePie's Skate 3 videos, which the YouTuber began to publish in 2014, four years after the game was first released, were so popular that EA chose to start printing new copies of the game. The developers said that "that was the start of it being like a “viral” thing."
However, the Skate fanbase has grown much more since EA turned the Skate 3 servers back on in 2018. While the developers candidly revealed that this was a mistake and that someone likely "rebooted a computer by accident," gamers being able to enjoy Skate 3's online multiplayer was the catalyst for getting more people into the game. By extension, the popularity may have been one of the reasons why EA is now developing Skate 4.
It's unclear what these social and community features may look like though as streamers, not just YouTubers, will want to get in on the fun. EA could add Skate cosmetics for content creators, the way Fortnite adds skins for streamers. The older Skate games offered an easy way to share videos, photos, and parks and the Skate 4 development team will likely be looking for ways to grow that too.
It's also unknown when fans will get to see any of these features or enjoy them for themselves. In 2017, EA said that Skate 4 isn't in development, and in this interview, the developers said that Laura Miele's promotion to chief studios officer in 2018 is what got the new game "moving." This may mean that development on the game has only just started and so Skate 4 could be a very long way away from release.
Skate is in development for unspecified platforms.
Source: Jemkem Magazine