Tony Hawk + PS3 = Tony Hawk - Online play = 360 + Tony Hawk - good d-pad

My heart is a little broken.

The wonder that is Tony Hawk, the best skating series that ever was, is coming to the PS3 naked. Neversoft, due to Sony's bumbling in the online realm, will not be providing any sort of online play for the PS3 version of Tony Hawk Project 8.

But I've already become akin to online Tony Hawk with the DS. I HAVE to have it. Is Sony's online "free" or will the PS3 be "free" of online? Thankfully, this will probably only affect several early games, but it is extremely annoying.

Obviously, I love the 360, and it's respective version WILL have online play. But the 360 d-pad is loathsome when it has to be used for the main control in a game (which is rare for today's games). For this reason alone, the Tony Hawk titles would be among the very few games I would prefer to play on the PS3. Even though the 360 version of American Wasteland was mocked for its lack of visual upgrades, the only reason I'm not interested in it is because the 360 d-pad sucks (I'm definitely not alone in this thinking).

The last Tony Hawk I purchased was the original Underground for the Gamecube. Guess what I did after a few minutes of play? I whipped out the Gamecube to PS2 controller adapter and enjoyed the game.

I guess I could always buy a 3rd party 360 controller with a better d-pad...