The Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series hasn’t seen a truly great game in many years, and 2015’s entry drowned in bad press and community feedback. Tony Hawk himself even ended his working relationship with Activision, although the latter retains the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater branding. Rumors have been bubbling of Activision giving the series another go and based on a new-deleted Facebook post from band The Death Set, we can assume those rumors have some weight.
The Facebook post has since been deleted, a telltale sign of accidental marketing spoilage. But The Death Set announced it had licensed multiple songs for a 2020 Tony Hawk game. The post didn’t clarify if it was for Activision or something new Tony Hawk himself has been working on with a new company, but either way the messaging was pretty clear. We see this sort of thing happen quite frequently with external talent working in games, since nobody else in entertainment media is as secretive as video game publishers.
There have been some other rumblings of what’s coming from Activision in 2020, besides the obvious yearly Call of Duty . We won’t comment too much on rumors though. But between this, a similar incident on a podcast interview with pro skater Lizzie Armanto, and some recent rumor-mongering from popular “insiders,” it’s hard to wave this one away as simply a rumor.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was a hugely popular franchise from the get-go, all the way up to the HD era when things started getting shakey. Through developer changes and stuff moving around at Activision over the years, subsequent THPS games just didn’t arrive at the same level of quality. It would be nice to see the series make a comeback, so we’ll just have to wait and see how it goes.