Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 Remake Was Reportedly Rejected In Favor Of More Call Of Duty Content

After the launch of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 in 2020, developer Vicarious Visions reportedly pitched a second remake for the third and fourth games, but these plans were nixed in favor of the developer working as a Call of Duty support studio. That's according to video game historian Liam Robertson at Did You Know Gaming (via VGC), who reported that Vicarious Visions originally planned to include THPS 3 and 4 in the remake, before the studio realized just how big the project was.

"We settled on adding some handling features from the later games to reflect the way people remember the old Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games," one of Robertson's VV sources claimed. "The improvements from THPS 3 seemed to bleed into people's memories of the first two. Eventually, it became clear that we didn't have time for more than 1 + 2, so the idea that we'd continue on and release 3 + 4 in some fashion was on the table."

Despite the success of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2, Activision reportedly passed on the pitch so that VV could assist on Activision's biggest franchise, Call of Duty. The studio was eventually absorbed into Blizzard as a support team in April 2022 and rebranded to Blizzard Albany. In contrast, Toys for Bob recently parted ways with Activision Blizzard and it has reportedly reached a deal with Microsoft to fund its next title. As Microsoft now owns Activision Blizzard, there's also the possibility that this pitch could be revisited in the future now that the studio and the franchise is technically under new management.

While the Tony Hawk franchise appears to be dormant for now, there are several other skateboarding games to check out right now. Session: Skate Sim and Skater XL provide a more realistic approach to the genre, and EA's Skate series is set to relaunch as a free-to-play title. It's currently aiming to kickflip its way onto consoles and platforms before 2050 at the latest.