Skate rolls in September

In 1999, Electronic Arts beat Activision to the skateboarding market with Street Sk8er for the original PlayStation. However, being the first on store shelves didn't help EA much, as Activision's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater went on to dominate the genre and has gone largely unchallenged for skate supremacy in recent years.

EA is finally getting back on the board with Skate, and today the publisher told gamers when they can expect to play the new alternative in the alternative sports genre. According to the publisher, the Xbox 360 version of Skate will ship September 12 in the US and September 14 in Europe. However, as with Rainbow Six Vegas and Stranglehold, Sony gamers will have to wait a bit longer to get the game, as EA has announced ship dates of September 24 and October 5 for the PlayStation 3 edition in North America and Europe, respectively.

Those intrigued by but unsure of the game's physics-based control system can soon get a chance to try it out for themselves, because EA also announced that a demo version of the game should be available on the Xbox Live Marketplace starting August 15. The demo will include tutorials and a look at the skate-reel feature, which lets gamers put together video clips of their runs and share the footage online.