EA’s New Skate is Free to Use, Because Of Course It Is
Are you familiar with Skate? The video games EA and Black Box used to create in the late 2000s. The series culminated in Skate 3. An arguably great game. Electronic Arts has a new one in the works, called Skate.
It will be available on all platforms — Xbox, Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, as well as PC. After the console release, it might be available on mobile. When will it be released? Unclear. Uncertain. The news, Kate. It will be completely free to play and monetized using cosmetic microtransactions.
Wait, wait, come back.
Why are you so worried? It’s fine. Skate 4’s free play is legit and legitimately acceptable. It’s an excellent idea on Full Circle and EA’s part. Microtransactions are a good idea for a sports game. It is fair to charge players for personalizing their characters (like Fortnite). EA knows a lot about microtransactions that have direct gameplay effects.
Microtransactions were a common feature of many games from the EA library in the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 era. You bought Skate 3used! The Online Pass will cost you $10. Do you want to play the Dead Space2 multiplayer game? $10. You want to see the titties of The Saboteur. $10. EA constructed a well and pressed a button to release gallons directly into the water.
The landscape has changed over the past ten years, especially after EA’s horrible handling of Star Wars Battlefront II. Imagine that you are John EA, President of EA in 2014. I showed you this screenshot taken from the s Kate’s development diary.
To be clear, EA allowed studios to forgo microtransactions that could modify gameplay. This was a decision made to protect its reputation and bottom line. EA isn’t kind and doesn’t exist for anything but to make money for shareholders. However, this statement is an admission that EA made a mess of and did not know what was best for its revenues in 2010.
The new Skate will be modelled after Fortnite. The core game, which is the part that allows you to skateboard, will be completely free. A new, wider audience can access the Skate game, the sport, and the genuinely chilled and positive vibes that have been a hallmark of this franchise. It’s inspiring for me. It will be an excellent opportunity for Momiji and Sky Brown to learn a new sport while also getting to play as the skaters that they dream of becoming.
Maybe they’ll let me be Gibraltar from Apex Legends or whatever else; I don’t know.
Is EA worthy of this trust? It’s probably not. Skate is something I love. It seems that Full Circle loves it as well. To be effective stewards of a franchise, you must respect the source material and have the ability to modernize the elements that made them so special. They had to take 343 attempts at Halo before finally getting it right. We can only hope that developers will be able to skate.
