As regular readers of the blog should know – we’re really committed to keep supporting Burnout Paradise through 2009, so this week we’re so pleased to tell you about ANOTHER DLC pack that’s coming.

Two weeks ago we told you about our Burnout Paradise Party Pack – giving you great pass-the-pad party play on your sofa…

Last week we gave you the first sneak-peek of what’s coming in our Burnout Paradise Legendary Cars Pack, with the amazing, hovering 88 Special…

This week, well, we think the screenshot speaks for itself – the Burnout Paradise Toy Cars Pack:

We hope you agree that we’re keeping up our promise to take Burnout Paradise into places you’d never imagined.

These Special Edition Burnout Collectibles will be coming in 2009.

Next Friday, we’ll be back to tell you about even more DLC that’s coming next year.

(And regular readers and fans – we know what DLC we’ve not talked about in a while – be patient with us, it’ll come – it’s just we’ve still got MORE to tell you that you’ve not even heard about.)

See you in 7 days!

*And, another episode of our video podcast – Crash TV (that’s now streaming on our site, as well as being on iTunes)

This was the much-hyped FREE downloadable pack for Burnout Paradise, bringing fans a live blog page and game event calendar, 70 new Freeburn Challenges, 3 online game modes (Marked Man, Stunt Run and Road Rage), plus a stack of changes and improvements to the game, including support for 1080i displays and improved image-quality on standard def TVs.

So, how did it go?

Well our game telemetry showed more players in Paradise City than at any time in the last 4 months – a huge spike in traffic! If you joined us, thanks for playing; if you haven’t come back to Burnout yet, there’s never been a better time. Cagney was a big hit, but we’re not through yet!

We ran our first calendar events – Drift Kings and Prize Cars – our first forays into the world of broadcast gameplay. We’re building the ability to change Burnout Paradise gameplay on-the-fly. Check the in-game calendar for upcoming events. Our goal is to make Burnout Paradise different every time you play.

It’s pretty exciting stuff but also pretty experimental! Our first tests were successful, but we tracked how people were playing (through game telemetry), and we’ve overhauled the schedule for the next few weeks, based on what we saw. Three events-per-week just felt like way too much for most players, so we’re going to rein things in a little and keep all our new cars unlocked, so nobody misses out on the action.

We started this off by introducing the stunning Nakamura Rai-jin Turbo to all players last week. You’ll need all your skills to control Paradise City’s newest and fastest car.

And the Hunter Olympus was made available on Thursday. As you can see from the shots, this car is a beast. It’ll breeze through traffic and makes a great choice in Marked Man. No boost. No acceleration, no problem!

We’ll look forward to joining you soon in Paradise City and bringing the Playstation Blog some hot news on our next update – we’re just putting the finishing touches on Burnout’s first motorcycles!

Week #1 we set the blog alight with details of the new game modes coming to Burnout Paradise in the Codename: Cagney update.
(And mentioned 1080i support for those who have HD TVs that only support that mode!)

Week#2 we talked about the Timed Challenges coming to Burnout Paradise in the Codename: Cagney update. (And broke the news that we’re supporting PlayStation Trophies retroactively in Burnout Paradise at some point, too!)

This week…

Well, we’re pleased to announce that Codename: Cagney – the FREE update game of changing content for Burnout Paradise is here!

To get it – just put your Burnout Paradise disk into your PlayStation 3, launch the game and it’ll download automatically.

It’s that easy – and it’s all FREE – new online game modes, new vehicles and a stack of enhancements and fixes to make playing Burnout Paradise even better.

But even with all that there’s more – there’s the Game’s new Live Page, which is the thing we’re really excited about and want to let you know about this week.

The Live Page does two cool things:

First, it serves up news about the game – so that’s news about updates and the kind of stuff you’d expect on criteriongames.com, but it’s also news about what’s happening in the game – so, expect to find news about what you’ve done in Paradise City as well as about what’s happening online, like when we hit the 100 millionth crash, for example.

Secondly (and this is the really, really cool bit), it’s where we can, using the Game Calendar, create what we’re calling ‘Live Broadcast Gameplay’. This is how it works:

If you check out the Game Calendar, you’ll see certain dates on it are ringed. These represent ‘Live Events’ that will occur on that day. In the news panel on the Live Page there’ll be a corresponding story telling you about what’s happening on those days.

So, for example:

Saturday 12th July 2008 – Prize Cars Weekend
Where for one day, if you go online we’ll let you try out all of the Carbon and XS Cars (that are normally available only when you complete the offline game) for you to test drive in races and Freeburning.

As this shows – it really allows us to mix up the game, and we’ve got a schedule packed with cool events that stretch out through the summer.

This breaks down as:

The other great thing about Live Events is that it allows us to award our players with all kinds of cool stuff. So, starting in a few weeks’ time:

Graduation Weekends
In these, we’ll let you try out new cars and new liveries for a whole weekend. Over the course of the weekend, you’ll be able to test drive our vehicle of choice, and if you want to keep it, then we’ll set up an online challenge for you to complete.

The first such event will be our “Mount Olympus” event in which you’ll get to test drive the new Hunter Olympus, and, if you win an Online Road Rage event in it, you’ll get to keep it forever.

We’ll be running multiple Graduation Weekends that will introduce even more vehicles and for those players who participate in all of them, there’ll be a special prize.

So there you go – more exciting and innovative stuff from Criterion Games. Now, let’s see what we can come up with for Week #4!

Here at Criterion, it was great to get the news that the Codename: Cagney update for Burnout Paradise has passed through submission at Sony Europe. That’s a great place to be in. Next step – get the “okay” in the USA and we’ll be sure to be hitting our deadline of 10th July for this awesome FREE pack of game-changing content.

Also, the third episode of our video podcast, CRASH TV is blowing the roof off the iTunes charts with its combination of exclusive footage, news, and details of upcoming PlayStation-specific features.

And talking of upcoming PlayStation-specific features, we’d like to confirm here that Criterion WILL be supporting PlayStation Trophies in a future update of Burnout Paradise. It won’t be the Codename: Cagney update, but Trophies will be coming to Paradise soon.

Now, if that wasn’t enough excitement for the week, we thought we’d talk about Timed Challenges – a new feature that’s coming to Burnout Paradise online in Codename: Cagney that gives you even more ways for you and your online friends to get together and have amazing fun with cars.

If you’ve not played Burnout Paradise before, you may not know about what we call “Freeburn” or “Freeburn Challenges.” So if you haven’t, here’s the deal:

Burnout Paradise is about having fun with cars in a massive, open-world city. Sure, it’s about racing and other game modes, but one of the things that really sets Paradise apart is “Freeburn.” Up to eight players meet online to just mess around in their cars – see who can drift the furthest, get the most air, spins, barrel rolls, drive furthest in oncoming traffic, etc.

Freeburn Challenges are a part of that mode – special challenges that the host of the online game can activate for everyone to do together.

A challenge can be anything from simply driving in oncoming traffic or finding a billboard and smashing it, to lining up all of your teammates and jumping over them. It’s about teamwork and having fun, and there are 350 of these challenges to play with.

Now, Timed Challenges are a new set of 70 Freeburn Challenges that are coming with the Codename: Cagney update that add an extra, but exciting, element – a timer.

When a Timed Challenge is started, players must meet in a specified place within Paradise City. Once there, a timer begins to count down and the team of players must race to complete a challenge in the world in the shortest time possible. If you’re all successful and beat the clock, your best time is put on a leaderboard.

Sounds simple? It is, but it’s loads of fun, and that leaderboard drives everyone back for “just one more go” because you know you can shave a few more seconds off your best time!

And talking of countdowns, it’s just over 9 days to go before you can check it out when Codename: Cagney is released as a free update.

(These exclusive screenshots show a Timed Challenge in progress – here, two new Codename: Cagney cars – a Rossolini Tempesta Dream and a Hunter Steel Oval Champ meet up in a basketball court by the beach and must to leap off the roof of a car park on the far side of the city.)

The truth is – we simply haven’t stopped.

We’re into our “Year of Paradise” – 12 months where the Burnout Team keeps on developing exciting new stuff to expand and change Burnout Paradise (and in the process, we aim to radically change what everyone expects of downloadable content).

We’ve so far released our 1.1 update, and our second update, codenamed: “Bogart,” packed with fixes and game-enhancing features.

Now, we’re expecting our third FREE update codenamed: “Cagney” that’s coming on 10th July (yes, that’s FREE – just put your Burnout Paradise disk into your PLAYSTATION 3 and it’ll download automatically), and we’re really excited about it as we count down to its release.

We’re talking:

3 new Online Game Modes

• Online Stunt Run – you and up to 7 others compete for the highest stunt score
• Online Road Rage – where you team up and try to stop the other team from reaching their destination
• Online Marked Man – someone gets called out and everyone else tries to hunt them down

70 new Online Timed Challenges

• Everyone teams up to pull off stunts and other feats in the world, against the clock

New Vehicles (including the Hunter Olympus)

Major improvements to our Ranked Racing system

Plus heaps more, including:

• 1080i support for PlayStation 3 owners with “almost HD” sets
• Improved Standard Definition rendering for PlayStation 3
• Support for Custom Soundtracks on PlayStation 3

Outside of the game, our website, www.criteriongames.com is changing too – we’re posting up to 4 stories daily direct from the team and we now have an audio and video podcast from the team that goes out on a weekly basis. This week’s podcast released on Friday, we’re talking in detail about what to expect in “Cagney” and the other game-changing updates beyond that.

The pace of change here at Criterion is breathtaking, so we’re going to be posting here on the PlayStation.Blog at least once a week to let you know more about what’s happening and what’s coming to Paradise City.