Turning weaknesses into strengths is an appealingly simple approach to take with sequels. The main reason more developers don't try it is pretty simple as well: it's very hard. Much easier, then, to simply ignore the cracks that are forming, paper over them and let the problem quietly spread around the entire structure until, one day, several years down the line, it undermines the whole enterprise and you're left with a pretty mound of toxic rubble.
But EA Black Box hasn't done that. The developers of last year's Skate actually managed to take one of the very few things that annoyed players in the original game and spin it into something fun. "We discovered the control scheme could be confusing, and people fell down a lot," admits producer Jason DeLong. "We decided to reward that."
