Skate It

"I would say without hesitation that our quality is going to be up this year versus the prior year," Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello said in a Tuesday earnings call.

Riccitiello has made it a very public priority to up the quality of EA's titles. A recent review score average of EA's titles was 77 percent, but Riccitiello said at an analyst meeting in February that he wants EA to exceed 80 percent by fiscal 2011.

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Electronic Arts is set to bring a spin-off from Skate for both Wii and DS, tentatively titled Skate It.

The original version trounced all over Tony Hawk by heavily focusing on dual-analogue stick control for stuns and moves. It was bastard hard at first but worth the blood, sweat and tears if you stuck with it.

"We knew it would be an exciting challenge to bring the soul and feel of skateboarding to the Wii and Nintendo DS," said

IGN writes...Last year, Electronic Arts and Black Box literally reinvented the skateboarding videogame design with Skate, an Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 experience that put heavy focus on dual-analog stick control for its gameplay. What were once automatic button presses in games like Tony Hawk now had to be worked for by flicking your thumbs to pull them off. Because of the dual-analog focus, it wasn't surprising to see that the original game didn't make it to the Nintendo Wii or the Nintendo DS ¿ two systems that lacked the standard control offered by the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. But that hasn't stopped the publisher from trying ¿ in 2008, Electronic Arts will release Skate It, a spin-off of last year's console design that will focus on utilizing Wii remote and Nintendo DS touch screen for its skateboarding control. The Wii version will also support the Wii Balance Board that will ship with Wii Fit in two weeks.