In an interview with Great Fall Tribune, Neversoft Entertainment co-founder and president Joel Jewett has confirmed long-standing rumours that they will not be developing the next Tony Hawk game, stating that "it’s time for someone else to add fresh ideas." Development reins have apparently been handed to Robomondo, a new start-up comprised of former EA Chicago and Studio Gigante employees. …

Skate 2 will be hitting shelves in January and anyone who was a fan of the first game is probably counting the seconds until it’s release. What will be getting fans even more excited is that details about the online modes have been released and are making the game look even more incredible than before. It looks as though Skate …

I have to admit that I had really high hopes for Skate It on the Wii. I am a huge fan of EA's Skate. that was released last year for PS3 and Xbox 360 and so I was obviously holding thumbs that the Wii version would give me a good reason to slide out the Wii balance board for the first time in months. I was excited to see that 1UP had posted it's review of the game, so I clicked through to see what they thought. The result was unfortunately not exactly what I was hoping for as they landed up scoring it with a "D" (using the same system that grades were given in school) According to the review, the controls are incredibly poor, often resulting in different tricks being performed even though the reviewer was using the same motion each time with the Wii-mote. The balance board is apparently pretty much useless due to oversensitivity and the game world empty. I was really sad to read through the brief but straightforward review. Maybe if a sequel is produced, the developers will have a better grasp of the hardware and it's abilities. My last hope is that the DS version comes along nicely, if not, I guess I will have to wait for Skate 2's release in the first quarter of next year.

I love videos like these, they always remind me why I shouldn't bother trying to skate again. It's one thing to see gameplay videos and tech demos for a new game but it's a different story altogether when the video's sole purpose is to show you just how badly you can destroy your poor self in an upcoming game. The latest video for Skate 2 does just that and some of these bails had me cringing at the thought of experiencing a bail like that for real. Granted, I have a had a couple of real life bad ones before and the idea of leaving the bails to the videogame characters sits perfectly fine with me.

This latest trailer for Skate 2 gives us a bit of a look into the storyline for the game. Now I know you might be thinking that the story in Skate 2 is just about as important as the story in a pornography but after watching the video I was pretty impressed (with the trailer not the pornography). While the story is very light, I really like how the pro skaters have been integrated into the cut-scenes, with the voice work and animations looking pretty solid as well. This is just another reason that Skate 2 has so many people eagerly awaiting it's release and is showing just how important it was for the Tony Hawk development team to take some time off to renew the brand, because this is looking incredible, Skate 2 comes out at the end of March in 2009, so there is still a little bit of a wait. If you own the first skate then you can still break that out to get some practice and if you somehow missed that train, I suggest you go and pick up what is now a very cheap copy of the first Skate so that you can start perfecting those 360 flips.

Skate 2 is shaping up to be even more of a fantastic game than it's older brother. So, what would Skate be without a few pro skater's to run into (literally). This latest trailer shows clips of each pro skater in the game busting a sweet move and gives us the full roster of the faces that will be in the game. Skate 2 only ships next year but the excitement is already killing me.

This video marks the first time that we see how the Nintendo Balance board is going to work in the Nintendo Wii version of the newly popular Skate franchise. Although they discuss how the balance board works they have actually done very little to explain how all the tricks are actually going to work. They explain that by leaning back on the board you will ollie and by leaning on the front you would perform a nollie. I somehow doubt that a 360 flip will require you to do something similar to an advanced level of Dance Dance Revolution. My guess is that the ollie will be performed with the board and then the trick itself will be performed by flicking the wiimote. Either way this could prove to be a lot of fun and the balance board will add an interesting element to you balance in grinds and manuals. I hope they don't mess this up because I actually think that they may be onto something here.