Skateboarding Games Are Done, EA Says

EA boss man John Riccitiello revealed last week his view on sports games and how skateboarding titles in particular had "run their course" and that they were no longer popular enough to warrant investment for new iterations.

EA was late to the skateboarding game genre, as Activision dominated it for a long time thanks to its partnership with famous skateboarder Tony Hawk.

Still, the company recorded some impressive results with its own Skate franchise, which saw three popular iterations, all coming from EA Black Box, released in 2007, 2009 and 2010.

Now though, skateboarding games are approaching the end of their so-called 15 minutes of fame, and fans of the genre have long abandoned them in front of other games.

"When it comes to action sports, I think that's going to be an ongoing exciting genre," Riccitiello said on a positive note, before adding, "But at least for the level of excitement out there, skateboarding seems to have run its course as the representative example in that broader genre."

His words are backed up by lackluster sales endured by Activision's two new skateboarding games, Ride and Shred, which, despite serious marketing efforts, didn't capture fans.

Of course, their failure can also be blamed on the fact that Activision bundled them with a special skateboard-like peripheral, on which players needed to stand and move in order to pull off tricks and other such things.

EA's Skate series, however, stayed with the regular controller input, and saw its last title appear back in Spring of this year for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

The title gained decent reviews and its sales weren't exactly off the charts.

According to Riccitiello, it seems that this lukewarm reception is enough to keep EA off the skateboarding genre, at least for a couple of years.