Activision hopes for Tony Hawk Shred sales turnaround over the holidays

by David Hinkle on Nov 20th 2010 12:00AM

It's been a sad story for Tony Hawk Shred, which managed to move a miniscule amount of product -- 3,000 units in its first week, to be exact. Despite marketing efforts such as putting Al Roker on a board and letting him go to town, it would seem that Tony Hawk Shred is bound to the same fate as Tony Hawk Ride. But with the holiday gift-buying season in full swing, Activision has hopes it'll see "a bigger ramp-up" in sales as the holiday season progresses.

In talking to Gamasutra, Activision's CEO of publishing, Eric Hirshberg, admits that the company needs to "build awareness" for the title -- Hirschberg says Shred was selected as one of the top 12 holiday gifts on The Ellen DeGeneres Show (worked for Kinect!) and is banking on that exposure -- but attributed some of the sequel's lack of commercial success to the fact that, for the first time in franchise history, it's solely being marketed to kids. It's also "a gift-oriented game," he said, which plays into Activision's hopes that more units will fly off the shelves as consumers get to shopping.

For the full interview, a majority of which talks about Call of Duty: Black Ops, hit up the source link below.

Source: Gamasutra

Tags: activision, Eric-Hirshberg, microsoft, nintendo, playstation, ps3, robomodo, tony-hawk-shred, wii, xbox

Reader Comments (50)

Come on Activision, it's just not gonna sell. You know it, we know it, soccer moms know it, and Tony Hawk knows it... maybe.

Just go ahead and put THPS 1, 2, and 3 HD up for download on PSN/XBLA and call it a night

@Cleric

Not going to sell.

I paid Ellen $100,000 to make my toy a top 12 gifts for Christmas too! Everyone look for my bags of pubic hair to be sold everywhere this holiday season!

@Jack Kevorkian

Bags?

@A Sandwich I save them from my victi...uhhhh patients.

What?... so people become helplessly stupid during the holidays or something?

@RagingStormX

Ever been to a Black Friday sale?...

Don't hold your breath Activision.. on second thought please do

THPS2 HD, I'll buy it day one. Make it happen actvision... you like money, I know you do.

Wait, when did this game get announced and/or released? I honestly didn't know it existed.

So, basically, they made Shred just for the six people who enjoyed using the Ride board and thought it had a future as a periheral? That's a pretty fan-loyal developer, if you ask me.

@The Joy of Cooking DeMat
Same here. I remember hearing about a sequel to Ride, but this release came out of the blue for me, as well.

@The Joy of Cooking DeMat I was at Wal-mart and saw it and was like WTF? Didn't they try this experiment last year eliciting a collective yawn from the masses? Hell right beneath the shred boxes was about as many boxes of the previous one.

That's a lot of hope even for Activision. If they were expecting the title to sell they coulda done a better job marketing. I saw more Shawn White commercials than I did Tony Hawk.

@Lerkero
FYI, I saw NO Tony Hawk commercials

@Lerkero

Well they do say it's marketed more towards kids. My guess would be they played during the morning/after school hours on CN and Nickelodeon... unless that's exactly when you were watching TV, cause then I'd have no clue how the marketed it.

@sonicspike41
As a college student we often watch those channels around those times when there's nothing better to do and we all forgot our consoles.

@The Aquacharger
It submitted without putting the rest.
I've never seen a commercial at those channels/times either.

Looks like the tony hawk franchise has reached that point. Like a crippled dog that used to be the best hunting dog in town is now old and ragged. Their still pushing him out there to hunt for that large game in the woods when deep down the most sympathetic thing to do is to load up the shot gun and walk him behind the shed just one more time.

@Stevetrop Man of Mystery You could always let him go take a nap at home.

@Stevetrop Man of Mystery That was quite the analogy

@Stevetrop Man of Mystery

damn, man. do you really have to use a shotgun? i guess you do if you want to completely annihilate all physical traces of the poor, raggedy dog. otherwise, why not just use a rifle? hell, a .22 would work. or you could just use a pistol. but a shotgun? damn. that's just asking for complete and utter evisceration.

Tony Hawk Games...I haven't enjoyed them since I played Underground on the gamecube

@Ryuk They've definitely been hit or miss. I actually enjoyed Project 8 though. Proving Ground let me down but I'm probably gonna pick P8 back up when I'm out browsing the stores.

When did Activision start making comedies?

ill say black friday sales will DOUBLE the first week sales! oohhhh boy!

@8bitartist
20?

Of course, it all makes sense now! The reason Activision's game is selling less than the last one is because they're marketing it to FEWER people. LOGIC!

Oddly enough, it turns out that crossing your fingers and sticking your tongue out is an ineffective method for winning back customer support.

Don't you build awareness for a title before it gets released? I had no idea this thing existed until I found out it shifted 3K in its first week. Still, maybe if Gamestop and other retailers put all the copies they have at the front of their stores, that should help to build some awareness, of course whether it sells is a different matter. This seems like one horse that has been flogged too much and should go out to pasture. But of course, this is Activision we are dealing with here.

I've never actually heard of a game turning around at Christmas though. It makes sense but you never really hear about it happening. But I'm sure it happened somewhere along the line.

Just don't say it for every fricken game at the end of the year.

What the hell is the matter with these poeple.. Bring back our old school Tony Hawk.. You're ruiningTony hawk's name!!

Quit trying to reinvent this game with a stupid board that you need to play..

Tony Hawk 3 is easily one of my top 5 all time favorite games, then they made this crap!!

@snooprogg Correction - THPS2.

There was a new Tony Hawk.....
*sigh*

Give us THPS2
And make money that way
Or does Bobby Kotick what to throw more hideous games out?

Christmas miracles do happen Activision...

I really used to like Tony Hawk after I played THPS2. But ever since I accidentally sat in his seat on a Dallas flight and he kicked me out of it. When I was going back to Iraq after leave. I haven't had much respect for him or anything to do with him since.

@NightEagle Was it first class?

@Jack Kevorkian Actually the whole flight was business class. @ColdHeat In my defense I was a little distraught leaving my wife at the airport and confused my seat number with the gate number. At first I didn't realize it was him but once he put his skateboard in the overhead compartment there was no mistaking it. I think I'm just a little jealous and looking for an excuse to disrespect.

"It's also 'a gift-oriented game,' he said..."

That's code for "it's crap, but we're banking on all the stupid parents buying gifts to not realize it."

@db2

Either that, or it's code for "we actually hoped it would sell on normal conditions, but gift-giving is our only hope now". But that one makes less sense, since, honestly, they could never hope it would sell on any conditions, let alone normal ones. Not after Ride.

@db2 I'm pretty sure that's the exact same line of BS used by the people who published Soul Fighter for the Dreamcast when Soul Calibur came out.

Oh yeah, I'm taking it back, WAY back. Fire up the Google, kids.

I'm not one for skateboarding, but THPS up to 3 I loved, especially 3, in fact I could play 3 now :)

The others, not so much, easily forgetable :/

I like how the screenshot Joystiq chose has a fence post clipping through Tony Hawks skateboard. This game is just full of fail.

@NauticalDisasta I believe thats a background object

Yes, because the sales and the absolute SUCCESS of the last game merited a sequel.. Why was this a good idea?

Wow, 3000 units... I guess the game was just overshadowed by the much more popular Call of Duty. Activision should have retired the Tony Hawk series about 5 years ago and focused their efforts elsewhere.

so basically what activision is saying here is that you guys better sell more tony hawk, or else we will FIRE YOU ALL!!!!! MWUHAHAHAAAA

Ok did they do anything to make it better? Or is it more crap aimed at uninformed mom's. My friends wife got him Ride last Xmas and although I knew the reviews said it was awful we popped out the booze and hooked it up. We had some fun but over a little time the crappy hardware/software quickly killed that. If they fixed that it might be a fun party game. My guess is it's another piece of shat.

So anyone else find it dirty that they are obviously paying the Ellen show to select it as one of her "top gifts" of the year when it's obviously not worth a shit? Not that the show had any credibility to begin with, but it's just wrong that soccer moms and grandmas are going to watch that, think that it's an awesome game because Ellen said so, and then drop this steamer on some unsuspecting kid on Christmas morning.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 was awesome. This game is not. Who has even cared about recent Tony Hawk games? Too bad - I say Activision is screwed. Just stick to "forgetting" to pay others money (ala Infinity Ward), I say. They seem to do that well enough.

I, like many joystiq readers, had no idea this game was even out before I started reading this "oh crap it only sold 3,000 copies" articles. And keep in mind I read video game news pretty much all day. So that says something for their stellar PR team.

Tony Hawk Shred

Activision hopes for Tony Hawk Shred sales turnaround over the holidays

Reader Comments (50)

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 12:03AM Cleric said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 10:41AM SirUrza said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 12:04AM Jack Kevorkian said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 2:24AM A Sandwich said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 10:35AM Jack Kevorkian said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 12:10AM RagingStormX said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 12:11AM Cleric said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 12:14AM alewis119 said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 12:23AM Faenix said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 12:27AM The Joy of Cooking DeMat said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 1:32AM Voshempa said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 2:03PM MDizzy said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 12:30AM Lerkero said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 12:31AM Lerkero said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 3:03AM sonicspike41 said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 3:21AM The Aquacharger said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 3:22AM The Aquacharger said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 12:38AM Stevetrop Man of Mystery said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 5:44AM wcarnation said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 9:18AM The Cole Train said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 1:08PM Liquidfingers said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 12:39AM Ryuk said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 1:34AM Voshempa said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 12:53AM liquidsoap89 said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 1:04AM 8bitartist said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 3:23AM The Aquacharger said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 1:54AM Jokerman333 said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 2:22AM Elmoogle said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 2:40AM Hong Dong said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 2:43AM Snappyguy said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 3:00AM snooprogg said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 3:02AM MintagedVortex said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 3:04AM Jetup said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 4:21AM prodigy69 said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 5:11AM NightEagle said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 8:35AM Jack Kevorkian said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 4:37PM NightEagle said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 9:36AM db2 said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 4:17PM The Joy of Cooking DeMat said

Posted: Nov 23rd 2010 3:22AM onan said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 10:26AM Spunky Monkey 190906 said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 11:17AM NauticalDisasta said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 12:27PM wcarnation said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 12:54PM Captain Worcestershire said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 1:00PM Uracat said

Posted: Nov 20th 2010 1:10PM Liquidfingers said

Posted: Nov 21st 2010 7:00AM v6sonoma said

Posted: Nov 21st 2010 2:24PM evanset6 said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2010 7:12AM TCJJ said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2010 4:17PM TheRealLawrence said

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