We've lost count of the number of times skateboarding has been pigeon-holed or dismissed as a 'craze'. The fact of the matter is that the sport has been more popular at certain times in the last forty years (since its Californian roots in the early 1970s) than at others, but its never gone away. And it's fair to say that it's currently enjoying a popularity peak.

Indeed, the world of mega-successful, international skateboarding celebrities such as Tony Hawk, Danny Way and the like is so far removed from SPOnG's own experience of skateboarding as a nipper. Whilst we were forced to nick scaffolding from our local building sites for coping on our rickety mini-ramps, these guys today get paid trillions for pulling 1080 degree turns and fifteen foot airs all over the world.

So it's no surprise to receive the latest news from über publisher, Electronic Arts, which is that they plan to release a next gen skateboarding game in 2007, called, imaginatively, Skate.

First news on the title emerged earlier this morning, coming originally from an American magazine exclusive. SPOnG has been trying to get more details directly from EA since then, and we've now received the official release on the game;

“SKATE will deliver the feel of skating through innovative controls, authentic cameras and a fully reactive skateboarding city. The game features professional skaters such as Danny Way and PJ Ladd, as well as a reactive city and relevant in-game cameras that capture and deliver the most authentic skateboard videogame experience to date.”

The game's executive producer Scott Blackwood, at EA Black Box in Canada, said of SKATE, “We’re focused on capturing the actual feeling of skating with the innovative control system, the physics driven animations, the intelligent cameras working together to really deliver the closest thing to being on a board.”

The release also mentions that EA aims to “captures the true feel of skating versus the typical button mashing gameplay of past skating games” - clearly a dig at the hugely successful Tony Hawk's series from Activition.

We will certainly be keeping our beady eye on this one. We love skateboarding here at SPOnG, even though the last time this writer actually tried to do any real-world skateboarding he nearly cracked his coccyx.

It's also good to know that Neversoft now has a serious competitor in the skateboarding videogame arena, as this type of competition can only mean better games for fans of the genre.