Somebodys gotta do it

i guess we're all in on it... Something like "Skate", only with skis and downhill on snow would be awesome!

The question is, who ISN'T in on it?
I think everyone would be up for this.

It's just not that logical at a time like this. When a developer wants to make a really good game, it takes a ton of time.

One of the biggest problems currently is probably finding a good physics engine. They would want something fairly realistic, however there is nothing that great on the market for skiing or snowboarding that they could use. It makes it a real pain to find/make one.

Then they have to look at their consumer base. There are what, 200,000 skiers around the country that would have interests remotely similar to a game like this. I bet maybe 10% of those would pay for the game, and only if it's really good. That means they are selling like hardly anything for tons of work being put into a game. There would be little to no profit. I personally just don't think it will ever happen.

I think it would be pretty simple to adapt one of the existing game engines for a skiing game.

The Havok physics has been used in a bunch of the Tony Hawk games.
I'd love to see a game made with the Unreal engine.

True I forgot about skating games. You could probably adapt one of those engines to a skiing game pretty easily. I still don't think there is the market for it currently though, its just not worth the money for most developers to make a good game for such a small group of people.