Yes, Tony Hawk 'would love to' have a Facebook game [Interview]

Tony Hawk isn't just a skateboarding legend, he's also a thrifty entrepreneur. From his professional skateboarding career, to his clothing brand, to his eponymous game franchise (including the new Tony Hawk Shred), the man has made the name Tony Hawk synonymous with skateboarding the world over.

So where does a man -- seemingly at the peak of his career -- go from there? In a recent interview at a swanky NYC hotel, Hawk details the possible social gaming future of his game series, his interest in Microsoft's hands-free gaming peripheral, and his desire to introduce younger fans to his oldest -- and most beloved -- games that bear his name.

Do you think the Tony Hawk game series could make its way to Facebook or other social applications? Are you interested in exploring that segment of the market?

I would love to. I think maybe the first step of that was when we released Pro Skater 2 for iPhone and iPod Touch. I would love to port more of those games -- that would be amazing. Because I feel like you have a whole new experience with handheld devices and PDAs/Smartphones ... whatever you wanna call them. We just have to find the right partnership.

There's a lot of love for older games in the Tony Hawk series that you share enthusiasm for. Is there any possibility of seeing those games moving to more social mediums or Facebook?

Yeah, there's definitely interest. To be honest, that's more Activision's call. I try to move it as far as I can or, you know, push them in that direction. When the iPhone stuff came out, it was me knocking on the door like, "Hey, these guys, they can do it." There was this underground video that went out that they ended up taking off the web for awhile because Activision asked them to -- 'cause they just did it on their own. But I saw it when it came out and I said, "You guys gotta get on this. We gotta do this." And obviously there's a lot of legalities and licensing things, and it took a long time, but we did it.