This seems familiar...
What you need to know
- Activision has broken Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 for users who upgraded to next-gen.
- Many users are reporting crashes, but the game seems to work in offline mode, indicating some kind of server problem.
When Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War launched last year, the game had an intriguing next-gen omission that set the game apart from its peers launching across Xbox One and Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X consoles.
Instead of using Microsoft's Smart Delivery content management system, which allows developers to ship resolution and frame rate upgrades to Xbox One games running on new-gen hardware, Activision opts for its own "upgrade patches" in order to nickel and dime console players out of resolution and frame rates that are a given on PC.
In any case, Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War was broken for several weeks, as a result of Activision not using Smart Delivery. If you had the non-upgraded version of Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War, the game would crash relentlessly on Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X, until you purchased the upgrade pack and re-downloaded the entire game. Activision's methodology for "cross-gen upgrades" seems to have now claimed another victim in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2.
Users who purchased the $10 upgrade patch have reported widespread crashing (via Pure Xbox), although some have reported that playing the game in offline mode seems to work as a temporary workaround. The issues seem to arise when the game attempts to connect to Activision's servers, indicating that there may be some version mismatch shenanigans taking place.
It's a bit of a shame, since Vicarious Visions' faithful remake of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 is quite easily one of the best Xbox games out there. I'm low-key intrigued how Activision didn't learn from the problems it created with Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, potentially as a result of not using Xbox's Smart Delivery feature. In any case, we'll be sure to update this article if and when Activision sorts it out.
Pay for pixels
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 Cross-Gen Upgrade
Cross-Gen Upgrade ($10 at Microsoft) Cross-Gen Version ($50 at Microsoft)
Help Activision execs get more money.
You can help Activision execs get richer by paying $10 to upgrade your Tony Hawk's Pro Skater to the version PC owners get for free because you know, greed.
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