VentureBeat’s Jeff Grubb spotted pre-alpha footage of Skate 4 that was posted online by a burner account and it wasn’t the best look for the cult boarder. The short 30-second snippet shows what appears to be an urban arena with rails as the player character skates around and performs tricks. The most disappointing part is neither the character model nor environment had textures. Fans weren’t exactly too happy with what they’ve seen since Skate 4’s been in development for at least two years now. This slow progress suggests that EA is still in the very early stages of Skate 4’s development, which Grubb corroborates by saying that EA is still trying to “feel” the game out. The good news here is that this initial look confirms that EA is ramping up the development of Skate 4. Back in March, Tom Henderson claimed that Skate 4 was entering playtesting soon, and this footage appears to have come from that.
— Jeff Grubb (@JeffGrubb) April 20, 2022 We can also presume that the COVID-19 pandemic has made it difficult for work on Skate 4 to progress normally after the series’ creative director, Cuz Parry, as well as game director, Deran Chung, announced Skate 4 in June 2020. For what it’s worth, we don’t think Skate fans will mind waiting a little while longer for the next installment of the fabled skateboarding sim. The last Skate game, Skate 3, was released back in 2010. Speaking of Electronic Arts, the big-time video game publisher is having a mixed year so far. Battlefield 2042 continues to struggle six months into its launch and next year’s soccer sim might no longer carry the FIFA name. Also, EA has canceled EA Play in lieu of individual video game showcases scattered throughout the entire year. EA is expected to release F1 2022 in June with a slight chance for Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order 2 to follow suit just a few months later.
