What happened to "extreme" sports games?

Most of my weekend has been spend watching X games Los Angeles, which is one of the highlights of my sports year, I simply love the atmosphere around the competition, and the events themselves truly fascinate me, whether is is street skating, rally cross, gymkhana or doing tricks on a motocross bike. My interest in these sports started when I was a kid and played a ton of these games, Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX, No Fear Downhill Mountain biking, Tony Hawk, Street Skater, Cool Boarders, ESPN Extreme Games to name a few, and later on I've loved the Skate and SSX series along with various motocross and ATV games.

This style of game has almost disappeared though, and I'm wondering why this is the case? I understand that sales probably have something to do with it, but as far as I know Skate 3 did pretty well in terms of sales and reviews, and with the extreme sports scene being almost as popular (as I understand) as when the X games first came through in the 90s, I'm wondering what happened and if we'll ever see a resurgence in this subgenre.

I know it isn't the most serious take on the sport; but I would kill for a follow up to Amped 3.

Well, as far as gymkhana goes:

VRUM VRUM VRUM

The '90s ended.

Needs more Hyperblade.

Lack of interest, really. I never hear or see anyone talking about the X Games or any of the sports associated with it ever.

We had one last year, it was called SSX. I recently stumbled upon this post on indiestatik.com, about this indie game called MTBFreeride, it seems really good even if just small demo build. What I wanna know is, why all those surfing games were terrible.

Also, did anyone ever play Street Sk8er? I remember playing this one a lot on my PS1.

@rebgav said:

I couldn't tell you why I stopped paying attention to extreme sports. I think the focus shifted to bigger airs (which lead to crazier tricks) and it became less about what you could to on a street course. My interest in extreme sports dropped with my interest in extreme sports games. I used to watch the extreme sports channel that was on here in Canada and I used to play extreme sports games all the time.

The last time I watched an extreme sport was Crashed Ice at Quebec, and that was the first time I'd seen an extreme sport since the first Crashed Ice at Quebec, 5 years before it (it's easy to know how long it was since I watched the first one and the guy who won this year won his fifth and has never lost the Quebec race).

The last time I played an extreme sports game was .Skate. The technical excellence of that game made Tony Hawk games feel like shit in comparison. Tony Hawk games were going downhill anyway. Skate 2 pushed it further but then .Skate 3 came out too soon. That might be an indication that Skate 2 cost more to make than it brought in. Especially if you consider that the team was gutted shortly after Skate 3. It couldn't possibly have done as well as it seems.

Music games may have eaten their lunch some as well. The target audience for both extreme sports and guitar games are junior high to college freshmen ages guys. Music games got huge but they also have higher costs due to the peripherals and available expansions and DLC. These school aged guys aren't exactly flush with cash either.

This

I want a BMX game that's like Skate.

@jacdg: This game used to be THE SHIT BACK IN THE 90`s SON

This happened...

I was going to post this.

I'd kill for another Skate game.

They got run into the ground by Activision.

I was too.

Taking it to the extreme is just one of those days..

Ha! I wish there was another Metal Gear Skateboarding minigame!

They were driven into the ground and people got sick of them. Same thing that happened to music games.

I know, right? I love watching the X Games whenever they're on for exactly that reason, and I used to play shit like Dave Mirra's Freestyle BMX (and obviously THPS) all the time. If they put a B-team studio on it and released a game annually, it would probably be at least slightly profitable.

Most of the snow/winter extreme sports became Olympic sports. The faces of extreme sports from skateboarding, bmx grew up, had kids, and are now spending their 40s with severe arthritis and ruined joints. The most extreme sports are little better than throwing yourself down-a-hill on a plank of wood with wheel but no brakes...those people are self-selecting for death...and achieving it very successfully.

PS2 had so many of them, was so good!

This thread is over 4 years old now, got bumped by spam a couple of days ago.