We released our first premium content for Burnout Paradise – the Party Pack !

Our Freeburn online play is a cool way to hang out with your online friends, but we wanted to give you a way to play PlayStation, when your friends comes to visit.  The game supports up to 8-players for pass-the-pad single-screen action.

You can find out more on the Criterion Games Network.  We’re now making use of PlayStation’s in-game browser to bring you all the latest news direct from the Burnout team.

Party is our first premium-quality content for Burnout Paradise.  It’s available now from the PlayStation Store for $9.99.  And if you can’t bear to stop playing Burnout, you can also pick it up from our own Burnout Store within the game.

If you’re new to Burnout, you can now get the whole game bundled with all our 2008 updates and the Party Pack on the PlayStation Store for $29.99.

You can hit this link to see the team playing a session in our latest video podcast – Crash TV.

And finally, we used the Criterion Network to bring Burnout players exclusive news of a new pack for 2009.

Slotting in soon after the Party pack, Legendary Cars, Toy Cars and Boost Specials, comes another premium pack – Cops and Robbers.  This one’s dedicated to bringing you the thrills and spills of cops and robbers car chases in Paradise City.

We’re keeping the gameplay under wraps for the moment, but in the meantime here are the first images in all their glory.

But, the 88 Special is just a one quarter of our forthcoming Legendary Cars pack. Now it’s time to show you the 3 remaining cars.

We’re keeping things pretty much under wraps on these vehicles for the moment. After all, we’ve got a ton of exciting content arriving at the beginning of Feb to tell you about first. But before we get into that, we couldn’t resist bringing you the first images of these spectacular vehicles.

Boostin’ makes me feel good!
First up the Manhattan Spirit. Not the fastest car in Paradise City, but this reimagining of Burnout Paradise’s Hunter Manhattan should keep the spirits at bay.

Fans of the original will know that this underused beauty is great for stunts. This customized special version is even better, but like all the Legendary Cars, this has a trick up its sleeve – hit L3 and boost to find out what it does.

This car does not exist
This is the Carson Nighthawk. Denied by the government and disowned by Carson, this ultra rare version of the Carson GT is the ultimate super pursuit vehicle!

The custom lighting array triggered by boost makes this the most distinctive-looking vehicle for night time events in the dangerous world of Paradise City.

One for the good ole boys
And finally, the Cavalry Bootlegger. Branded with the Mexican flag and tagged as a tribute to The Chicanator, one of our big-time Mexican Burnout fans, this is a classic modified Hunter Cavalry.

Hit a massive jump and press L3 to sound the incredible horn – it’s one of the defining moments in Paradise City.

Also available in orange.

2008’s been an awesome year. We shipped the award-winning Burnout Paradise – Spike TV and IGN PS3’s Driving Game of the Year. We dragged Burnout kicking and screaming onto the next generation and a new era of open world freedom, social play and MASSIVE scale support.

That support started with 3 new online game modes, new cars and designs, 70 new challenges, a live news page, custom soundtracks and stacks more – this was our FREE “Cagney” Pack.

We followed it with the biggest change to Burnout since Takedowns – motorcycles!

The FREE Bike Pack blazed onto the scene in September along with day-night gameplay, 70 more challenges and dynamic weather.

We delivered trophy support and became one of the first full games to appear on the PlayStation Store – you can head there now and buy it, if you haven’t already!

Next year, we’ll be back on PlayStation 3 with a truck-load of premium paid content. We hope you’ll join in the fun with the Legendary Cars, the Party Pack, our Boost Special Cars, Big Surf Island and of course the cute and cuddly Toy Cars!

It feels like the Paradise City Party’s in full swing now, and with the launch of The Ultimate Box, there’s never been a better time to get in on the action.

But above all else, this year’s been about you guys – Burnout and PlayStation fans all over the world! Our goal was to get to know you through 2008. We’ve built a blog, an awesome website and Crash TV – our video podcast. We’ve been Freeburning with you and reading your comments here on the PlayStation blog.

Thanks for joining us, thanks for all the incredible feedback and thanks for playing – it’s been a blast! See you in 2009.

BTW – we just uploaded our Christmas Show with a glimpse of the 88 Special – the first footage seen outside the studio. Hope you like it!

Today, we’re announcing the incredible new Carson Extreme Hotrod.

If you caught our recent announcements, you’ll know we’re bringing more content to Burnout Paradise through 2009. We’ve talked Party, Ultimate, Legendary Cars and Toys in recent weeks. Now we’re mixing things up with a little boost-based gameplay innovation with the Extreme Hotrod.

We’ll be back in the New Year with all the details on this powerhouse racer, but for now we’re keeping it under wraps.

We could tell you that it’s the fastest car in Paradise City – a stripped down, ultra low, overpowered straight line monster.

We could talk about its roots in American Rat Rod culture and it’s wildly exaggerated Hot Rod features, based on a ‘20s Roadster.

We could explain that we’ve rewired Burnout’s vehicle dynamics system, so it handles more intuitively and drifts more realistically than any other car.

We could reveal that it’s the first of a pack of 2 cars designed to re-imagine Burnout Boost. Which explains the blue exhaust flames.

We could do all that, but we don’t want to give away too much. For now, all you really need to know is that this car will give you the ride of your life and in early 2009 you will NEED to own it.

The Carson Extreme Hotrod. Light the touch paper and hang on for dear life.

We’ll be back with movies, screens, more info and interviews with the creators on this and the “other” boost car that will be available to buy as part of our Burnout Paradise Boost Specials Pack in 2009.

Just check back here on the blog, www.criteriongames.com or Crash TV for all the latest.

Next week. Big Surf. See you then.

We’re continuing to support Burnout Paradise through 2009. The fun starts with our Burnout Paradise Party Pack in Feb and will be followed by our awesome Burnout Paradise Legendary Cars Pack.

This year, we’ve introduced some of the most incredible vehicles yet seen in a Burnout game. Our FREE Cagney pack brought you the crazy Steel Oval Racer and the Hippie Wagon, and the FREE Bikes Pack introduced motorcycles to Paradise City for the first time ever.

In 2009, we’re taking Burnout vehicles to the next level with some truly unbelievable new vehicles. First up – The Jansen 88 Special.

This classic 1980’s styled silver sports car is based on the fan-favourite Jansen P12, but we’ve made a few interesting modifications.

Fill the gauge and hit boost to trigger burning flame trails from your back wheels. The 88 Special’s fast, manoeuvrable and great in the air.

In fact, if you want to take off, this is just the car for you. Hit L3 to switch to hover mode – the wheels retract and the car takes off and hovers through Paradise City at head height.

Seriously. It hovers.

This is the first of 4 cars that we’re making available as part of a wealth of new downloadable content for Burnout Paradise. They’re available to buy individually or discounted, if you pick up the whole set. In addition to the Jansen 88 Special, look out for the Cavalry Bootlegger, Manhattan Spirit and the GT Nighthawk!

We’ll bring you details and footage of these in a future post or on Crash TV (our video podcast), and we’ll be back next week with another killer announcement for next year’s awesome Burnout Paradise content.

And as always, we’re on hand for a while to answer your questions below!

So first up, we’re talking about the in-game browser for the PLAYSTATION 3. We always like to embrace the great hardware innovations for PlayStation. We’re using the browser to bring you closer to your friends and also to get you the latest news on what we’re working on – it’s like having criteriongames.com inside the game.

We’ll bring you all the latest on this PlayStation-exclusive feature over the coming weeks, but for now all you need to know is it’s called Burnout Paradise Network and it’ll be ready in Feb ’09.

Next up let’s talk Burnout Paradise Party Pack.

Burnout’s an awesome social game, but the action’s all online. With Party, we wanted to create something for when all the players are in one place – gathered around a single screen.
Fans of the classic Crash Mode from Burnout 2: Point of Impact will know that this is not the first time we’ve done something like this. And we hope the response to Party is as warm as it was for Crash mode.

So, if you like to get together and play games, it’s time to break out the drinks, party hats and balloons!

Now you can enjoy Burnout Paradise in a completely new way.

1. Get together with up to 7 friends and gather round your PLAYSTATION 3. Here you can see some of the Burnout team lining up for a little Halloween-themed fun. You can see the full session in our latest Crash TV video podcast – it’s The Halloween Special!

2. Start Burnout Paradise and get the Party Pack update from the Store

3. Pause to admire the excellent new Party Edition visuals and atmosphere! We’ve overhauled not just the presentation screens but also the in-game visuals, which are now brighter and more colourful in recognition of Burnout’s new party theme.

4. Select 8-player party and get ready for the action. If you’ve got the PlayStation Eye add your picture now.

5. It’s pass-the-pad, so you’ll only need one controller to play, no matter how many players are involved!

6. The game selects a player at random and drops them into Paradise with a simple, fun challenge to complete.

Land a barrel roll!

Survive racing oncoming traffic!

Race a circuit of the dirt track in the best possible time!

There are 3 types of challenge to take on – Stunt, Speed and Skill. Stunt involves jumps and tricks. Speed features quick time trials and timed challenges. Skill includes racing through oncoming traffic and drifting your car.

7. Pick up the winner and run around cheering / commiserate the loser

8. Give it another go! Don’t forget, there are extra trophies and achievements available within this pack, as well as a stack of other enhancements.

You’ll be able to purchase this awesome premium Burnout Paradise content from February 2009, but if you haven’t got Burnout Paradise already, there’s never been a better time to buy.

We announced today that we’re bringing all the 2008 innovations as well as Party to something we’re calling Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box. It’s a new packaged game that’ll be available in Feb 2009!

Look out for more soon – either here on the awesome PlayStation Blog, back home on the Criterion Games Web site and in our video podcast – Crash TV.

We’re finally able to announce that our latest free downloadable Burnout pack bikes will be out 18th September!!!

It’s tough to give specific dates on downloadable content, because we don’t know for certain until the last minute. But hey, we’re really excited about bringing bikes to Burnout, so we’re going to take a chance and tell you that we’re aiming for September 18 – that’s this coming Thursday!

If you missed our earlier posts, here’s what’s coming:

• Pick from 2 motorcycles featuring male or female characters and start on a whole new progression to earn your Bike License.
• 38 new against-the-clock race events – Burning Ride and Midnight Ride.
• A brand new in-game 24 hr day / night cycle that impacts traffic density and available events. (It’s fully customisable – you can make it day/night/change the clock speed – it’s up to you.)
• Dynamic weather brings an all-new look to Paradise City.
• And if that’s not enough, we’ve got 70 more Freeburn Challenges too.

Freeburn is Burnout’s uninterrupted drop-in / drop-out online play. It’s a cool collaborative experience, so it’s all about hanging out with your friends, messing around in vehicles while racing, pulling tricks and crashing in a massive open world city.

If 350 fun, co-operative challenges aren’t enough to keep you and your friends occupied, the Bike Pack throws a further 70 to the mix. These bike-exclusive challenges are split 50:50 between regular challenges and timed, against-the-clock challenges for those that enjoy a little more intensity.

We’ve got all the details on bikes at www.criteriongames.com and in our latest video podcast – Crash TV. You can see it now on iTunes.

Burnout Paradise is currently available for the Greatest Hits price of $29.99 on PLAYSTATION 3.

Next week, we’re back to talk trophies.

We’re working flat out to bring you yet another free content pack for Burnout Paradise – and this one’s the Bike Pack!

If you missed our recent posts, we’re trying something new with downloadable content this year. We want to completely change the game we brought you back in January with regular game changing updates. That means more than just a couple of cars and a new level.

For the first time in a Burnout game, we’re bringing you motorcycles. We’ve already talked about the 2 bikes available from Day 1 and some of the bike-specific gameplay that’s on the way, but there’s more to this pack than that. We’re introducing night time to the streets of Paradise City and with it, some unique gameplay.

When the pack arrives, just head for the nearest Junkyard and pick one of the bikes – either the Nakamura Firehawk V4 or the Nakamura FV1100.

Here’s a map showing Paradise City and all the different events you can try – Race, Road Rage, Marked Man, Burning Route and Stunt Run. For the full run-down on how these work, check out the video on our website.

Selecting one of the bikes triggers a whole load of new gameplay – 70 new challenges, 38 new against-the-clock races (Burning Rides) and new “Road Rules” record times for 64 streets – it’s like a whole new game to play through!

And if that’s not enough, once the sun sets at 8pm, the game changes.

The lights on the bike switch on, the traffic thins out creating an all new environment for high speed racing and we trigger some night-specific gameplay – half of the new Burning Rides take place at night and are called Midnight Rides.

Here’s how the clock works:

From 8pm to 8am it’s night. We figured you’d want to decide how fast this comes around, so we made the clock customizable. You can easily switch between day and night and try out the different gameplay whenever you like. You can also control the speed of change – anything from 24 minutes to real-time (24hrs), if you’re up for an epic session!

If you play an online game, we automatically switch all players to the host time, fast forwarding through day or night as necessary. I swear you never get tired of seeing it!

We’ll be back with more next week – our final post before Bikes go live!

And as always, if you want more details, head to our own website – www.criteriongames.com

If you like what we’ve got to say, head over to our website – www.criteriongames.com or check out our video podcast – Crash TV.

This week, we started to ramp up towards the release of our great FREE Bikes Pack. This one’s pretty much complete now and in the final phase of testing. Here at the studio, most of the Burnout team have moved on to the next pack, which is trophies. But more on that soon, because today we want to spill a few details about bike gameplay.

The Bike Pack adds another 9-10 hours of gameplay to our already MASSIVE game, but it’s important that we give you new things to do…not more of the same.

We’ve built another 70 Challenges. If you’re not familiar with Burnout, Freeburn Challenges are basically “online for the rest of us”. No intense competition, no getting schooled, no racing, no headshots! Just kick back, relax and tool around in Paradise City with your friends playing simple challenges that take you on a tour of the city’s most fun locations.

Half of the 70 new challenges are regular Freeburn Challenges – just hang out with friends and collaborate to get these done in your own time. The other half are timed, multipart challenges that inject a little excitement and allow you to replay to improve your best times. They include popping wheelies and staying on the back wheel to make the most of the fact you’re on bikes for the first time.

With bikes, you also get a fresh new map of the city, filled with the bike equivalent of Burning Routes (against-the-clock races). These are called Burnout Rides and bring a new dimension through 2-part checkpoint races. They’ll reward players that have spent a little time getting to know the city. There are 38 in total, and the traffic system’s been rebalanced to introduce you gently to an all new kind of Burnout racing.

And if that’s not enough, you can whip through the city breaking new bike-specific fast times set for all 64 streets.

The Bikes Pack is a massive deal for us at Criterion. Here’s why.

Firstly, we’ve never done bikes before in a Burnout game before. The way our cars handle has always taken a lot of work and getting the cars to feel just right has taken a lot of time and energy over the years. Bikes are all new, but we wanted to get them right first time. We’re pretty happy with the way they feel, and we hope you guys will be too. You can wheelie around the city and stop to pull doughnuts or combine the two!

Secondly, every new pack we build for Burnout Paradise is grander than the last. We want to change Burnout this year. Big time. And we want to do it through downloadable packs. We want you to know that if you buy Burnout Paradise, you buy much more than the disk we shipped back in January, and the Bikes Pack is the biggest indication yet of how far we’re willing to push the game.

We’ll be back next week to talk about how we’re mixing things up a little in the Bikes Pack with the introduction of Day and Night gameplay!

Today we’re proud to announce another PlayStation exclusive for Burnout Paradise. This fall, we’ll be making the entire game available for download via the US PLAYSTATION Store. You’ll finally be able to join us in Paradise City without leaving the comfort of your home, and you won’t have to get up to put the disk in!

A big thanks to the folks at Sony for making the future of video games a reality now. We’ll announce a release date soon, but in the meantime, it’ll look something like this:

The download will be $29.99, but it’s not the disk version of the game we originally released back in January. This is an all-singing, all-dancing version complete with all the free packs so far. Here are some of the highlights. All new game modes, like Online Marked Man and Online Road Rage. Awesome new vehicles, including the Hunter Olympus and Nakamura Rai-jin Turbo. 70 all-new challenges featuring against-the-clock gameplay and leaderboards plus the in-game calendar and news page. Check the details on our website.

And this is just the start. We’re all about supporting Burnout players through online this year.

We want to change the way you think about DLC. We’re bringing you much more than just a couple of cars or a new track – this is the complete transformation of Burnout. That means you’ll see new game modes, new vehicles including motorcycles, day / night gameplay, weather, a huge new island play area, stacks of new challenges and maybe even aircraft!

The next pack from us will be the free Bikes Pack that we outlined in our last post. We promised a little more detail on what to expect. So here it is.

The two bikes available from Day 1 will be the FV1100 street bike and the Nakamura Firehawk V4 racing bike. With bikes, we’re introducing characters for the first time in a Burnout game. Both bikes feature designs for male and female riders. Just make your choice in the Junkyard.

The Nakamura FV1100 is a no nonsense street bike. The sweet 1100CC engine delivers high performance with easy handling making it the most versatile bike in Paradise. The exposed engine doesn’t leave much room for stylish paintwork, but when the engine looks this good, who needs bodywork?

The Nakamura Firehawk V4 is thoroughbred racing bike. It arrives on the streets of Paradise straight from the race track! The Kanji characters on the guys’ version mean “fire”, but we also have a version for our female rider, featuring an all-new Burnout cartoon character.

We’ve got more on bikes from their Japanese creator – Yuta Nakamura – in our next video podcast, and of course our website – www.criteriongames.com

Burnout Paradise. Always changing.