Party harder and faster this Easter with the Carnival Expansion for MotorStorm RC, available beginning Tuesday, April 3rd for $3.99 on PlayStation Store! Take your radio-controlled racing rivalries to the next level as you compete for glory in a carnival park after-hours, battling for PlayStation Trophies and triple-medal status in every event to become champion of the biggest MotorStorm RC Festival to date.

Take on 24 all-new Race, Pursuit, Hot Lap and Drift events, all staged in the Carnival Festival on six extreme racing circuits – with 72 medals to win before you challenge your friends and rivals worldwide to make sure you’re faster than them all on every event! Hunt down four new PlayStation Trophies (Bronze, Silver x2, Gold) on your way to triple-medalling all 24 new events and a Gold Trophy for becoming a super-quick Carnival Champion!

Race and collect eight new vehicle models each with four Carnival-style liveries and also four color scheme choices per livery for a greater level of personalization – that’s 16 designs for each vehicle!

Beach Party / Bite Size: Hold on tight as you take a high speed tour of the carnival attractions and twist and turn around the biggest rides. Not for the faint hearted!
Aquaplane / Splash Down: Get your heart to pound and your adrenaline to pump as you race on the beach sands and prepare to tackle extreme bumps, hairpin turns and dramatic inclines. Watch out for the shark!

Hold your breath and splash the day away as you race through the twisting, winding water slides and drift on the wettest and wildest RC circuits! Do you have what it takes to become a Carnival Champion? Be there first or be the best, then challenge your friends to do better! Expand your RC Collection of off-roaders while you’re there with the special “Weenie” Buggy (it’s a hot dog!) and the FREE “Bumper” Supermini (it’s a bumper car!)

Whether you own the PS3 and/or the PS Vita version, purchasing the Carnival Expansion Pack will automatically give you the other for free! For those of you haven’t had a chance to own your own copy of Motorstorm RC for your PS3, the game is available for $9.99 on the PlayStation Store. And for a limited time only, PS Vita owners can download a complete copy of Motorstorm RC onto their Vitas for FREE, which allows players to race a custom RC version of Scion’s iQ thanks to our partners at Toyota.

Continue to check back here on the PlayStation.Blog for more updates regarding Motorstorm RC. In the meantime, enjoy the Carnival Festival and your Easter break!

Through a lot of love, care, and attention, MotorStorm RC has been transformed into the most exciting and addictive racing game we’ve ever created. It gives me great pleasure to finally be able to share that experience with you all — MotorStorm RC will be available on March 6th for both PS Vita and PS3 from the North American PlayStation Store.

See how much fun it is for yourself by picking up the free demo when the full game hits PlayStation Store on March 6th, and check out the extremely rare vehicles while you’re there…if that sort of thing takes your fancy.

So much to do!

MotorStorm RC revisits the extreme locations its bigger brothers put on the map: battling around the rocks and mesas of Monument Valley, crashing through jungles and tearing up the sandy beaches of Pacific Rift, sliding across ice sheets and barrelling down the mountains of Arctic Edge, and weaving through a city ruined by Apocalypse.

You’ll race eight classic MotorStorm vehicle types, ranging from the off-road Buggies to the lightning-fast Super Cars, and take on a full festival championship with dozens of events and medals to earn. As you rise to become the champion of every event, you will compete in wheel-to-wheel racing with eight vehicles on the track at a time, you’ll also be faced with three other game types: Drift, where you need to power slide for as many points as possible, Pursuit, where you need to move your way up the grid to first place from the back of the back as fast as possible and Hot Lap, the classic race against the clock for the fastest single-lap time.

Outside of the Festival, you can race at your own leisure in Free Play or fight for fractions of a second in the fiercely competitive world of Time Attack. And as you’d expect, MotorStorm RC on your PS3 serves up some good old fashioned split-screen multiplayer action for up to four players.

Race your way

Because of the unique way MotorStorm RC was made, picking it up on either the PS Vita or PS3 makes it available for the other platform at no extra cost. Not only does this give you great value, it means that all progress, lap times, unlocks, medals and trophies that have been achieved on one version are synchronised to the other, allowing you to take your game with you wherever you go, picking up where you left off.

Old-school racing for the connected generation

MotorStorm RC embraces the classic arcade racing styles that make the genre so iconic and brings it right up-to-date. With online leaderboards for every event, track and vehicle you can compete against your friends and the rest of the world with ease, no matter what your favorite race is.

The Pitwall is the home of your RC community, a constant supply of up-to-the-second updates of your friends’ progress. See their victories, their defeats and, most importantly, challenge them to beat your own times. The Pitwall will alert you when your friends set faster times than you, so the competition never lets up.

The ethos of MotorStorm RC’s competitive play has always been convenience and, with leaderboard challenges between friends and cross-play across both PS Vita and PS3, it’s never been easier to beat your friends, no matter what platform you’re playing on or what time of day it is.

So much more for you to discover

With a wide range of vehicles to collect and customize, a playground to explore and a Platinum Trophy to chase down, there’s plenty more for you to go out and discover in MotorStorm RC. On top of all that, for PS3 there are a few little extras: 1080p HD visuals; stereoscopic 3D; SimulView same-screen multiplayer and classic four-player split-screen multiplayer.

I hope you enjoy playing MotorStorm RC. We’ll be sure to call back here soon to share more details about March 6th and, thanks to our partners at Toyota, we’ll also have some more good news to share with you about MotorStorm RC.

Ahead of getting the opportunity to jump into the competition for yourself, I’m here to give you the low down on just how online competition works with other players – running you through a short video of me competing with Zoe (Evolution Studios QA Manager, who sits on the desk across from me) as I take on her performance in a Hot Lap race.

It’s so easy to see what your friends and rivals have been up to and, with super-fast load times on both PS3 and PS Vita, jump into a race instantly to beat their fastest times and wipe the smirk off their face.

Competing like this, on your own schedule, is a perfect fit for both MotorStorm RC and the PlayStation Vita, letting you pick up the game and compete against friends when it’s convenient for you. Whether you’re playing on your PS Vita or PS3, for a few minutes or a few hours, out and about or in the comfort of your own home; you can always see what’s been going on and get right into the heat of competition. MotorStorm RC is coming soon, so keep an eye out for more information.

I’m delighted to be able to announce – and show a trailer for – MotorStorm RC, Evolution Studios’ upcoming radio controlled off-road racing game for PS Vita and PlayStation Network. It was also announced literally moments ago on stage – so it’s absolutely hot off the press!

You can watch first video of MotorStorm RC in action here.

I’ve been game director to a small, elite team at Evolution Studios for most of the year, creating a simulation of high-speed radio-controlled car racing for PSN download. We’re extremely pleased with how the game is coming together; it’s a perfect combination of classic racing with really modern connectivity features and it’s already bigger than your average download game, with visually stunning renditions of all four MotorStorm worlds (and eight of their vehicle classes). Every aspect of the game comes loaded with endless competition that you can share with friends and rivals worldwide – whether that’s on PS3 or PS Vita, or both – and we’re still packing it full of challenges, race types and features too!

Everyone who has played MotorStorm RC so far says it really gets you hooked, with an addictive, hypnotic core experience – just like the best arcade games. Also like the best arcade games, stages take just moments to load, giving it that ‘just one more go’ quality, especially when you can play at home on PS3 and then continue your progress on the go with Vita.

And it’s still early days! We’ve got a lot more lined up and we’ll share all of it with you as the game comes together, but for now please check out our trailer and some of the killer features in MotorStorm RC!

Off-Road Racing on a New Scale

Conquer the most extreme racing environments in powerful radio-controlled vehicles, with hundreds of uniquely customized models to collect and performance based on 8 distinct racing categories: Buggies, Superminis, Rally Cars, Muscle Cars, Racing Trucks, Supercars, Big Rigs and Monster Trucks!

Four Classic Locations, 16 Unique Tracks

Experience the simultaneous challenge and excitement of racing in the world’s most extreme environments, from the dusty desert mesa’s of Monument Valley, to the dangerous jungles of a Pacific island, to the icy tundra at the Arctic Edge, to the apocalyptic ruins of an urban city.

Settle Rivalries Anytime, Anyplace

Challenge friends and the rest of the world to compete for the fastest times in every event – whether that’s on PS3 or PS Vita, or both.

Share Every Moment

Share every moment with your friends and make new friends via the Pitwall. Keep tabs on their activity – so you always know when there’s a new challenge or a new leader – and you can always stay one step ahead of the competition.

Four-Player Multiplayer on PS3

Settle the score with your friends in person with 4 player split-screen races.

Pay Once, Get Both

It’s the same experience on both PS3 and PS Vita, and picking up the game on PS3 will give you full access to the game on PS Vita (and vice versa) – so if you own both you can carry your progress between the two, and always pick up where you left off.

Players in the US can look forward to the release of Motorstorm RC on the PS3 and PS Vita next spring. We definitely will have more details to share throughout the coming months, so continue to check back here in the PlayStation.Blog!

On behalf of the team at Evolution Studios, I’m here to bring news of the biggest update to MotorStorm Apocalypse so far! We’ve always known that feedback from players and continued development of the game post-launch would be a key ingredient, and we’re still committed to supporting this goal. Read on for an overview of the free After Party update that hits PSN tomorrow today. We hope will enhance and extend your enjoyment of the MotorStorm Apocalypse!

A New Day-and-Night Track: The Rock

The stage for this After Party is an abandoned prison island near the bay, known to the lunatic racers and ravers as The Rock. Multiple routes have been carved into the island’s varied terrain, so expect off-road racing action reminiscent of the legendary island in the Pacific Rift.

Expansion of ‘Special Events’

A heap of fresh single-player races, hand-crafted by the design talent at Evolution Studios, are being introduced via Special Events Packs. Each pack sees you play as a distinguished character from the Festival, offering the grand sum of 120,000 chips if you can take 1st place in six unique events. The first pack (Stone: Jack of Clubs) is included in the update. Further Events Packs will be available in coming weeks via PlayStation Store, for free.

Weekly Challenges

Weekly Challenges offer you a great opportunity to boost your chip total. There are 30,000 chips on the table every week and to claim them you’ll need to beat the specified target in a Rookie, Pro and Veteran challenge. Chips, if you didn’t already know, unlock new Ranks and rewards in the game, as well as several PlayStation Trophies.

The available races change at the same time every week (on a Wednesday), meaning that there are new challenges to take on and more chip rewards if you can beat them. Good luck!

Vehicle Performance Re-tuned

Feedback from the MotorStorm racing community, along with the game data and statistics we’ve analysed since the first day of online racing, highlighted that a number of vehicle types would benefit from a slight performance re-tune.

In response to this, changes have been made to several vehicle types to support more evenly balanced and competitive races. Most noticeably improved are the Supercar, Dirt Bike and Superbike classes. The Racing Truck, Muscle Car and ATV types have also been tweaked.

Game, Servers and Connectivity Improved

The update includes many ‘behind the scenes’ changes to the game and the online servers, to make the overall experience more robust and reliable. Important improvements have been made to online matchmaking lobbies, player profile records and leaderboard browsing.

The After Party is a healthy update to the game, which we hope will keep you entertained while we continue to develop another big update – which will include the Game Mode Editor, steering wheel support and several other surprises we’ve yet to announce. In the mean-time, enjoy the After Party, look forward to the free Event Packs on PlayStation Store and watch out for a refreshing change to the Matchmaking playlists soon.

Keep tabs on these along with upcoming community events on motorstorm.com and follow @PhenomEvolution on Twitter for all the latest on Apocalypse.

Cheers!