Yesterday’s 20th Anniversary Xbox celebration introduced a range of backwards compatible titles, with over 70 new games added to the program along with the addition of FPS Boost to nearly 40 games. Among these, Skate 2 was one of the more noteworthy legacy additions. Unfortunately, the Skate 2 hype is about to dwindle as its servers are on the cusp of shutting down.
According to EA’s official Online Services Shutdown list, Skate 2’s servers are being pulled on December 15. This gives players only a month to relive the glory days with their friends. In the past, we would have said there was a chance of the servers coming back. After all, Skate 3 was shut down, then mysteriously went back online years later without any fanfare from EA. In fact, Skate 3 is still online.
This is not as likely to happen with the upcoming Skate game. As the audience favorite, Skate 2 has the potential to keep a healthy player base even in the face of a next-generation installment. We don’t know how much it costs to keep these servers active, but from a publisher’s perspective, EA wouldn’t want to compete with a title from its own past. It would want to push the newest game as hard as possible.
With that said, we have very little information on the next Skate entry. The last proper development update surrounded the announcement of a PC version this August. September’s Skate Day didn’t bring any announcements.
