Tony Hawk: Peripheral glut was "kind of the end" of Pro Skater

Tony Hawk has said his his series of licensed skating games fell apart because of feature glut, the death of peripherals, a rush job on Ride - and unfair criticism.

"Doing Ride, that project got rushed because it took us half the time to figure out the peripheral, which we thought would have been the easier part. Ride was rushed, and Shred was what I wanted Ride to be, but by the time Shred came out peripherals were fading away, so it was bad timing," Hawk told GameInformer.

"I wish Shred would have come out sooner. Once people started using full-body motion and all this plastic started piling up, that was kind of the end of it. If we had the right timeframe, we could have made it something more critically acclaimed."

The professional skater said many critics had already made their minds up about Ride before it was released, and didn't give it a fair go.

"By and large, I noticed the ones that were giving it bad reviews were the ones that played it for 15 minutes and didn’t go through the tutorial. They just got on and thought they’d be experts at the game because they are 'expert gamers.' That was my criticism mostly to them. They didn’t give it a chance," he said.

But Hawk said he felt the whole skating genre started to derail when it becamse a matter of rushing to add new features.

"The whole push through each incarnation was new features," he said.

"Once we went to Proving Ground and were using the flick system where you use both analog sticks to control each foot; I think that’s when we starting going too far with just trying to add new features as opposed to just making new levels and challenges. A lot of people lost interest as soon as we went out of the two-minute challenges."

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater is taking the series back to basics, mixing together levels from the first two games in the series on a brand new PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 engine.