Tony Hawk Ride’s sexy black board, tested out at E3 by our very own Matthew Razak, will be colored a “more consumer friendly” shade of white for the retail release. You can thank/blame Apple, completely monopolizing design aesthetic since 2001.

“It’s much more iPod-like for want of a better term,” said game director Josh Tsui in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, calling the prototype black board the “Darth Vader of skateboards.”

“With the white one people inadvertently step on it, but they don’t do that with the black one. That’s part of the industrial design of the board, to make sure people know it’s a skateboard, but it also looks friendly. We want people to see it as a cool gadget as opposed to ‘what is that black monolith on the floor?’”

Aside from being tired of my gadget collection looking like the electronic equivalent of a Young Republicans mixer, and the frequency with which I must obsessive compulsively clean my Wii balance board with Clorox® wipes, I think the black board would be better because it’s the Darth Vader of skateboards. Really now, that’s not something to complain about Josh, it’s something to plaster in ginormous typeface across the front of the box! Once you go black, you never go back! Never!