When releasing a new Tony Hawk title nine years in a row, Activision took 2008 off to institute calling it a part of their ‘innovation plan’ for there Tony Hawk series. But, ever since then they have been very ‘no talk’ on the title, but, boy, does time pass and now it seems that we finally get new – rumored – details on the next Tony Hawk title.

When speaking to Variety’s The Cut Scene blog, two anonymous sources, who have reportedly have seen the game first-hand, said that the next Tony Hawk title will abandon controllers altogether, but instead it will be using ‘board-like’ peripheral, which sounds alot like what the Wii’s Balance Board did in Skate it for the Wii.

These sources say that the game will not be so much about requiring precise balancing, but the focus will be more on “grabbing and manipulating the board” to perform tricks. They also say that the Wii version will be getting a Board also, instead of the the Wii’s Balance Board.

These sources also corroborated the rumor that Robomodo – a new development studio primarily formed by ex-members of EA Chicago – are developing both the game and making the new peripheral.

Update: G4 has posted the extended trailer from the game. Looks better than the original.

Original: Lead Animator, Tomas Hrebicek, has confirmed that the recently released Mafia II trailer was all created in real-time.

“It really was,” said Hrebicek. “All the scenes were completely created in our editor the same way we create cutscenes for the game. Our cutscene editor is a very powerful tool. Besides, we can see it all real-time which makes our work a lot easier. There was absolutely no need to modify the resulting video in the post production.

“Because everything was created solely in our editor, only our in-game scenes and models were used. So what you see here is great representation of the quality of work that you will see throughout Mafia II. Of course, this is not the end yet, and frame rate and other technical issues are still being tweaked in order to have the game working smoothly on all the platforms we create it for.”

The author of the forthcoming Metal Gear Solid 4 GamePro review has confirmed that the game doesn’t have a 90 Minute Cut-Scene. He told the readers "I’ve beat the game twice, and am the author of the forthcoming GamePro review," he goes on to say "Ninety-minute-long cinemas in MGS4 sounds like an exaggeration. Like the other MGS games, MGS4 definitely has a cinematic quality. And yes, some of the cut-scenes in the game are elaborate and occasionally lengthy. But not a one, to my recollection, even approaches 90 minutes ."

[Comments Gamepro via GamePro]