The legend of Tony Hawk has crossed the barriers of the world of roller skating and the American managed to penetrate millions of homes around the world with the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater franchise. The saga was born back in 1999 for the first PlayStation and managed to sweep sales, creating up to four installments.
Activision was in charge of publishing the work carried out by the Neversoft studio, which not only did an excellent job in terms of gameplay, graphics and a scandalous soundtrack, but also used a brand as recognizable as Hawk’s to call the attention of the public. Obviously, such success translates into very juicy economic figures
In his own words, Hawk rejected an initial offer of $500,000 for the use of his image and, in exchange, negotiated to be paid in the form of royalties. “When they were about to release the game, they started to notice that there was a buzz. They knew they had a good game overall and felt this surge of interest, so they offered me a future royalty purchase, right before the game was released,” Explain electric skater.
The decision was so damn good that it paid off a few years later. It was during the time of the launch of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4
“My main contact at Activision asked me to have lunch in Los Angeles when I was there one day, he wasn’t the main boss but he was definitely the guy who oversaw our games. He said, ‘This is what’s going on, we’re going to release the fourth game, the last three are still in the top 10 of sales. So, things are a lot bigger than you thought’ and he handed me a check for four million dollars.”
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The most striking thing about the matter is that it was only “my annual royalty or whatever”, so the total amount of money that Tony Hawk has made with the 20 video games that have been released in the last 25 years is unknown. The skater’s fortune is much larger than that amount, but he himself acknowledged that “I don’t want to downplay its importance. It changed my life, the video game changed my life“.
