Last week, something very sad took place over at Activision. Neversoft, the studio that created the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series, officially ceased to exist.
The remaining staff – whose last project had been helping out on Call of Duty: Ghosts – were officially merged with Call of Duty developers Infinity Ward, bringing to an end almost twenty years of Neversoft history.
While they recorded their biggest sales while working on the Guitar Hero series, its their creation and work on the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series that people will remember them most fondly for.
PERSONAL ANECDOTE: Tony Hawk’s 2 was one of the first games I played that I thought was genuinely “cool”. The skate brand licensing and use of real skaters helped, but it was mostly down to the soundtrack, which to this day remains one of the strongest, most appropriate collections of real music ever seen in a video game.
To mark the occassion, remaining Neversoft devs built a replica of the studio’s eyeball logo and set it on fire. Then they all got knives. Fitting.
We don’t need no water. #ALWAYSHARD @neversoft pic.twitter.com/PryQmraHx4
— matt/eyeballkid (@mattcanale) July 10, 2014
This is what Joel gave all of @neversoft on their last day of the studio today. (Yoinked Mike’s pic from FB) pic.twitter.com/LveyTOTYbH
— Stephanie Bayer (@NSSteph) July 10, 2014
If you’re starting to tear up, don’t be too sad; at least this is a “studio gone” story that doesn’t also end with “loads of people now out of work”.
[via CVG]
Comments
16 responses to “RIP Neversoft, The Studio That Made Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater”
Damn, I have good memories of the days of Underground. It felt like a game built for the sake of having fun and missions felt challenging to complete. Never again do I think I’ll find such good design decisions in a game that does not include (much) violence.
i loved underground so much but hated what they had eric do in the game, just grrr
Underground was released with that mini webcam too wasn’t it? Damn i loved that game they really need to get another good TH game out on PS4 or hell just a Skateboarding game would be nice.
Always felt like these guys were a really creative group that were basically stifled by Activision turning them into a port house and making them churn out annualized games.
Worked on 3 multi billion dollar franchises and still got shutdown. Why did it take Kotaku so long to find out? It’s 4 day old news.
actually Kotaku mentioned it 2 months ago
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2014/05/report-neversoft-merging-with-call-of-duty-developer-infinity-ward/
To be fair, they reported that the merger was going to take place back in May: http://www.kotaku.com.au/2014/05/report-neversoft-merging-with-call-of-duty-developer-infinity-ward/
They released some good games, so I bought them. I enjoyed them.
Their later games… Meh. I didn’t buy them.
Nothing really lost.
Did they get bought out by EA?
Mmm, nostalgia.
That said I always felt like they were kind of responsible for a lot of the downhillness of the Guitar Hero games, while Vicarious Visions were the heroes that injected so much love and awesome into the Nintendo versions 😛
I heard Guerrilla Radio for the first time in years at work on Wednesday, funny as straight away I said to my boss that it reminded me of Tony Hawk 2 and we got all nostalgic for it.
What a great game that was.
Always had hopes of a sequel for GUN even after all these years. If only more devs would take a chance like Neversoft did to make something different, hell even Rockstar Games gave it a go twice. I still have some of the early Xbox and Xbox 360 titles like GUN and many Tony Hawk games. Here’s hoping those out of work because of this get picked up soon.
Fond memories of skating the high school to Papa Roach’s Blood Brothers…
god damnit… reading this hurt more than expected… the first Neversoft game i played was THPS 1 on PS1 they had some amazing talent 🙁 Another good company turned into a fucking COD money printing slave by Activision.
Tony Hawk 2.
Tony Hawk 4.
Dem Soundtracks.
Please release them all again as a bundle for PS4, name the price I will pay it. Any added content would be a bonus
Damn… I loved the Tony Hawk Games to death until the release of Project 8 which I felt the series went downhill after that, TH3 and Underground were the cream of the crop in my opinion, Underground for its well done story mode and Tony Hawks 3 for its introduction of the revert and some damn solid level designs ( Airport, Canada and Tokyo = GOAT tier ).