Who made the 1999 original, and what became of Neversoft?
Neversoft built it. The California studio had never shipped a sports game when Activision handed it a skateboarding license, and the result reached American stores in 1999 on Sony's PlayStation.
The design was simple enough to explain in one sentence: a two minute clock, a list of goals, and a trick system loose enough that a first timer could chain a combo by accident. The soundtrack, heavy on punk and hip hop, did the rest. Ports followed to the Nintendo 64, the Game Boy Color and Sega's Dreamcast.
Neversoft made the series its own for a decade, then moved to Guitar Hero and Call of Duty support work. Engadget reported that the studio merged into Infinity Ward and became defunct on July 10, 2014, with studio head Joel Jewett and studio director Scott Pease leaving the industry after 20 years.
How much did Tony Hawk make from the Activision deal?
Before the first game shipped, Activision offered Hawk a one time buyout of his future royalties worth $500,000. He turned it down and took a cut of every copy instead. CNBC reported in February 2025 that he called that choice "the best financial decision of my life."
The licensing agreement ran 16 years, from 1999 to 2015, and CNBC put the series at more than $1.4 billion in sales.
Activision's own filings show the scale early. In its quarterly report for the period ended June 30, 2007, the company told investors it had released eight titles in the Tony Hawk franchise with cumulative net revenues of $1.2 billion, a figure that included Tony Hawk's Project 8 and Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam. Those two shipped in the same holiday quarter, which was the pace the series kept for most of a decade.
How bad was Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 in 2015?
Bad enough to end the run. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 arrived on September 29, 2015, the final year of Activision's license, and OpenCritic records an average of 32 across 43 critics, with zero percent of them recommending it and the game sitting in the bottom one percent of everything the site tracks.
The complaints were consistent: bugs, broken controls, flat visuals and missing design. Giant Bomb and GameSpot both scored it 3 out of 10. Much of the content shipped in a day one patch, which is how a skateboarding game about precision ended up remembered for skaters falling through the floor.
After that the license lapsed and the series went quiet for five years. By the time the PlayStation 2 generation ended, the audience that had bought a Tony Hawk game almost every holiday had already moved on, and the later entries had drifted toward open worlds, story modes and a plastic skateboard peripheral.
Did the 1 + 2 and 3 + 4 remakes work?
Yes, both times, and neither studio got to stay on the series. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2, rebuilt by Vicarious Visions, arrived on September 4, 2020, and Game Informer reported inside two weeks that it had passed one million copies sold through, the fastest the franchise had ever reached that mark.
Vicarious Visions did not make another one. NME reported that Activision moved the Albany, New York studio under Blizzard in January 2021 and completed the merger on April 12, 2022, after which the name was retired and the office became Blizzard Albany.
The follow up went to Iron Galaxy, which shipped Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 on July 11, 2025 at $49.99 for the standard edition, across PlayStation, Xbox, Windows and both Switch models, and on Game Pass the same day. Reviews were positive. Design manager Mike Rossi told Game Informer in 2025 that his brief for the new Waterpark level was that it "needs to feel like it was left on the cutting-room floor." The sharpest complaint was structural, since Pro Skater 4's open ended career was replaced with the timed runs of the earlier games.
Is a new Tony Hawk game in development in 2026?
Nothing has been announced. As of October 2026 the newest game in the series is still Pro Skater 3 + 4 from July 2025, and Activision has not named a successor or given a window.
Hawk himself has been the only steady source of signals, and he has been careful with them. On the first game's 25th anniversary in September 2024 he wrote, in a post NME quoted, "I'm not supposed to tease anything else about the future of the series, but there will be a future." That future turned out to be 3 + 4.
He has since said he would campaign for a remaster of Tony Hawk's Underground, the 2003 entry, while making clear the decision belongs to Activision. NME has reported that an Underground remake probably is not happening, because the layoffs at Iron Galaxy reached the team that built 3 + 4.
Those layoffs are the clearest signal in either direction. GameSpot reported that Iron Galaxy cut staff in April 2026 in a round that could reach 90 people, after 66 cuts in early 2025, with the studio saying it was "impossible for us to sustain the team size that we've carried this past year."
Who owns Tony Hawk's Pro Skater today?
Activision owns the series, and Microsoft owns Activision. GeekWire reported that the $68.7 billion purchase closed on October 13, 2023 after 21 months of regulatory review, which puts skateboarding in the same portfolio as Call of Duty and the Xbox hardware business.
That ownership has not made the back catalog any simpler. Pro Skater 1 + 2 was listed for Game Pass in July 2026 and then pulled before it arrived; Microsoft told Pure Xbox the holdup was approvals from licensors, which is a live problem for a series built on licensed music and real skaters. Pro Skater 3 + 4 stayed on the service.
Where to find one today: the original PlayStation and PlayStation 2 discs never got a digital re-release, so secondhand copies are the only way to play the versions people remember, and what they cost moves with condition and whether the case and manual survived. Sellers list boxed and loose discs on Etsy's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater listings. The 2020 and 2025 remakes are the only versions sold new, at $49.99 for 3 + 4.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a new Tony Hawk game coming in 2026?
No new Tony Hawk game has been announced as of October 2026. The most recent release is Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4, which Iron Galaxy shipped on July 11, 2025. GameSpot reported that Iron Galaxy cut as many as 90 jobs in April 2026, its second round after 66 cuts in early 2025.
Who owns Tony Hawk's Pro Skater now?
Activision owns the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series, and Microsoft has owned Activision since its $68.7 billion purchase closed on October 13, 2023. Tony Hawk's original licensing agreement with Activision ran from 1999 to 2015, and he licensed his name again for the 2020 and 2025 remakes.
How much money has the Tony Hawk game series made?
Activision told investors that through June 30, 2007 it had released eight Tony Hawk titles with cumulative net revenues of $1.2 billion. CNBC reported in February 2025 that the series has made more than $1.4 billion in sales since 1999. Tony Hawk turned down a $500,000 buyout of his royalties before the first game shipped in 1999 and took a per copy cut instead.