Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 Is No Longer Coming To Xbox Game Pass

Xbox has announced that, despite a previous update about upcoming games, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 is no longer coming to Game Pass. A confusing move as the skateboarding remake is published by Activision, a studio that Xbox, quite famously, owns.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 Isn't Coming To Game Pass

A prior post detailing the next ten games coming to Game Pass included Pro Skater 1+2 alongside Gears of War Reloaded, the two bigger games in the announcement, with the latter coming to cheaper Game Pass tiers. It has been available on Game Pass since it was released last summer.

In an updated post shared on Xbox Wire, a note at the bottom of the article reads, “We’ve removed Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 from the list of titles coming soon to Game Pass.” The game’s cover art has also been removed from the graphic showing what’s coming to the service over the next few weeks, but no reason for Tony Hawk’s removal has been given.

There have been rumblings that due to Game Pass’s lack of growth, Xbox plans on pulling back on deals to bring more third-party games to the service. Court documents revealed Xbox envisioned Game Pass having 77 million subscribers by now. In reality, it has fewer than half that, with that number even seeming to have gone backwards, likely due to the price hike, which Xbox boss Matt Booty revealed led to millions of people ditching Game Pass.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 Is Technically A First-Party Game

Tony Hawks Pro Skater 1 2 - via Activision

The thing is, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 isn’t a third-party game. It’s published by Activision, the studio Xbox bought in an industry-changing $70 billion deal in 2023. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 was released after the acquisition, which is why it’s already on Game Pass. Its predecessor, however, was released in 2020, so isn’t on Game Pass, and seemingly won’t be despite what Xbox previously promised.

Why Xbox would announce a game it owns the rights to is coming to Game Pass, only to later go back on that decision without an explanation, is anyone’s guess. The Game Pass game plan has been shaken up multiple times already this year. Maybe this is the first indicator that Xbox plans to make even more changes to a service that most people already find pretty confusing.

That unnecessary confusion is one of many reasons why Game Pass hasn’t become the Netflix of gaming that Xbox wanted it to be.

One of the biggest changes to Game Pass this year was a price drop shortly after the steep price hike that led to gamers unsubscribing en masse. The trade-off for that price cut was no new Call of Duty games on Game Pass day one. Perhaps, since it’s also published by Activision, this Tony Hawk decision is related to that, somehow, although beyond sharing a publisher, I’m unsure what that connection could possibly be. Maybe we’re about to get an Acti-Blizz Game Pass tier.