Skater XL Headed to Xbox One in 2020 - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 14 August 2019 / 1,764 Views
Developer Easy Day Studios announced Skater XL will launch for the Xbox One in 2020.
"Since the launch of Early Access for PC we’ve been barraged daily with requests to bring the game to Xbox One," said Easy Day Studios director and co-founder Dain Hedgpeth. "Skateboarding is a natural console experience; something fun to play kicking back with friends in the living room. Too many years have passed since a great skateboarding game was released for the console audience, so we’re stoked to be bringing Skater XL to Xbox One players around the world."
Here is an overview of the game:
Launched into Early Access for PC last December, the game has already seen players logging thousands of hours. The game has spawned a robust modding community of over 30,000 players on Discord, with players sharing mods for everything from skateboard deck designs, clothing, new maps, and gameplay tweaks.
With an emphasis on physics-based board control and freedom of expression, the team has worked closely with the skateboarding community to capture the feel and experience of skateboarding to make it accessible for anyone with a passion for skateboarding culture and/or game genre.
Incorporating extensive motion-capture, Easy Day built a custom animation system that composes real-time animations on the fly (versus canned animations), which are under the user’s control moment-to-moment, ensuring that no two tricks or sequences look alike. This gives the player freedom to be as creative as they like in putting together tricks and lines. A process known as photogrammetry was used to capture the new character model and a variety of gear, clothing and accessories for character customization.
Skater XL is already racking up an impressive library of online videos, thanks to the community-created Replay Editor mod, and the feature will be incorporated into the game’s release. Much in the tradition of homemade videos in the skateboarding community, players can make their own video edits, mashups and highlight reels.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
