After years of waiting, Electronic Arts announced that its new Skate game is hitting early access in 2025.
The official Skate account on X (formerly Twitter) revealed the news on Tuesday, saying that the team is “incredibly stoked” about the early access release, and that there will be more news over the next few months.
If you can’t wait to check it out, you can sign up for the Skate Insider Playtesting program to participate in closed tests.
we're incredibly stoked to announce that skate. will be launching in Early Access in 2025. we'll share more details on what to expect in the coming months. pic.twitter.com/ZbFL3WycWu
— skate. (@skate) September 17, 2024
This is a huge step forward for Skate, the next title in the long-dormant skateboarding game series. The franchise has been on hiatus since 2010. Despite Skate 3 being the best entry in the series, to the point where the publisher had to re-print copies in 2014 because of increased demand, EA said it had no plans to make Skate 4 in 2017.
EA announced that a new Skate game was in development back in 2020 during its EA Play presentation, although game director Deran Chung — who also worked on the original Skate games — clarified that it was in very early stages. Updates have been sparse over the years, with a few trailers and behind-the-scenes videos here and there. It was also unclear if this was a Skate 4, a reboot, or something else entirely.
Developer Full Circle revealed in 2022 that the game — stylized as skate. — would be a free-to-play title with microtransactions, and will take place in a new city called San Vansterdam (related of course to San Vanelona, the city from previous entries). The team called it an “authentic evolution” of the series, and that its live-service nature will allow them to update it for years to come. They also promised that there won’t be any pay-to-win microtransactions or loot boxes.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.