I have been a huge fan of EA’s Skate series even before the wacky physics antics of Skate 3 caused the game to become a viral sensation in the mid-2010s. Yes, I am pulling the “I liked it before it was cool" card here because, collectively across the original 3 Skate games, I’ve very likely put in thousands of hours just skating around those open worlds and seeing what sort of cool things I could find or do. I adore the series and, like so many others, have hoped for a new entry for years and years. Of course it was precisely because of the viral phenomenon of Skate 3 that finally got EA’s attention enough to consider doing a new entry, which was officially announced in June of 2020. After 2 years of working fairly quietly on the new game, EA’s new in-house developer Full Circle finally showed off some VERY early in-progress footage at the end of last month.

Now, it’s important to note that this is NOT Skate 4. It’s simply titled Skate, but it’s also not a reboot or a remaster. Full Circle’s dream for this new game is that it will be a live services-style game that won’t have yearly entries or sequels, but will instead continue to grow and evolve for years and years to come, with a large part of that having to do with the passionate Skate community keeping things going. Think of something like Fortnite, but for Skate. A new developer interview video released today goes into much of this new vision for Skate, and while the whole interview is filled with pretty interesting info, there’s something especially applicable to our readers here at TouchArcade at about the 6:23 mark.

That’s right, their vision for Skate is to have multiplayer and game progression sync across all platforms, from last gen and current gen consoles to PC, and that also includes mobile platforms. As Dan McCulloch, General Manager at Full Circle goes on to say, “We want cross-play and cross-progression on mobile" and “We’re pretty early on on mobile but we want to get the controls and everything to feel great, and when that’s ready we’ll bring it all together and you’ll be able to play on whatever platform you want with your friends, and that’s going to be awesome…".

Now, long-time readers may remember that the Skate series has already been on mobile before in the form of a mobile port of Skate It, the sort of stripped-down, touch control-centric version of the original Skate that launched on the Nintendo DS in 2008. It made its way to iOS in September of 2010, and being the big Skate fan that I am, I reviewed that version way back then. Despite its steep learning curve Skate It was pretty darn fun, and the dual analog stick control scheme that is at the heart of the entire Skate series actually translates really well to the touchscreen.

So all this is to say that I’m really excited for the new Skate game from a console and PC standpoint (Steam Deck, anyone?), but if I can also truly take it on the go on my iPhone and have everything sync up with other versions, then that would really be something special. Of course it’s still very early on for this new Skate and it’s totally possible a mobile version just doesn’t ever work out, but the comments in the video above have me excited and we of course will continue to follow the game’s development to see what ends up happening.