I love this time of the year. Those couple weeks and days leading up to E3 when speculation and rumors run wild. In this case, those rumors revolve around the possibility of Skate 4 becoming an actual thing. The reason? For some reason nobody can understand, EA has switched the servers back on for Skate 3. If you miss doing tricks with your buddies, now's your chance.

I haven't played a ton of skateboarding games in my life, but I was a fan of Skate 3 (even if the co-op was so-so). I'm also not the only one that would love to see a Skate 4 despite the fact the development team behind those games is now long since scattered to the wind. At least I'll be able to grind all over again now that Skate 3 has been added to the Xbox One Backwards Compatibility list.

The sun is in the sky and the flowers are blooming.  What better thing to do than stay indoors and play cheap games on your Xbox 360 and Xbox One?  This week sees a reduction on a fair few titles including Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare, Burnout Paradise and Syndicate.

EA and Blackbox have announced a new set of downloadable content for the six player co-op game Skate 3.  Called Hawaiian Dream, the content adds new skate parks designed by Plan-B skateboarder Danny Way, a Danny Way in game character, tons of official Danny Way gear, and loads of new objects to create your own skate parks with all inspired by that little island in the Pacific ocean. 

Co-Optimus has brought you a lot of information about Skate 3 over the past few months, and now that Black Box’s latest in the Skate franchise has finally grinded its way into retail, we’ve gotten a chance to spend some quality time with the game and dive deep into all of the co-op it has to offer.

Skating always proved more fun for Isaac when accompanied by the ambient sound of spooky nursery rhymes

Today's the day.  Skating fans will finally be able to ollie, heelflip, darkside catch, and 360 flip, if Coach Frank has anything to say about it, and co-op skating fans will be able to do all of that with their friends as Skate 3 hit the store shelves today.  To celebrate the game's release, we've got a special giveaway for one lucky community member.  Want to know what it is and how to win?  Keep reading after the (hippie) jump.

We last spoke with Skate 3 producer Chris "Cuz" Parry at the community day back in November when the game was still in alpha. Now that the title is almost here, we spoke with Cuz again about what's changed since then, what challenges they faced, and why it's all about skating with your friends.

Black Box’s co-op skating title, Skate 3, is almost here and the good folks at EA Canada invited Co-Optimus to Vancouver to check the game out before it's released. With the final build of the game in front of us, we were given free reign to run around, explore, and try out everything we could.

In just a few days Skate 3, the third game in the successful Skate franchise, will hit store shelves and bring with some opportunities for you and your friends to tackle the skating world co-op style.  EA sent us a new video of the game with in-game footage that shows off a few tricks and co-op challenges in action.  Players can team up to tackle photo challenges, compete in races against computer opponents, and "own the lot."

We're just a couple weeks away from Black Box's latest entry in the Skate franchise, Skate 3, and while we've seen a fair amount of the team-based multiplayer aspects of the game, both in our impressions and from the recently released demo, we haven't seen too much of the co-op aspects in action.  Fortunately, a new video from EA gives us a taste of what some of that co-op looks like, and what you and your friends can do together when you team up in the freeskate mode.  In addtion to the new video, there's another bit of news to share.  Interested in asking the developers some questions about the game?  Read on to find out how.  

During PAX East, we heard from a couple of the community managers from EA that a demo for Skate 3 would be available on XBLA and PSN on April 15.  Well, today is the day and skateboarding fans everywhere can check out the latest in the Skate franchise for themselves.  While the demo is a good length and offers plenty to do (a tutorial plus 10 challenges and a few online multiplayer modes), it's a shame that it doesn't allow you to call up some of your friends to skate around and participate in challenges together.  Still, May 11 isn't that far away and this is one of the few demos I've played where you get a pretty good feel of what the rest of the game will be like.