Sony has put out a preview of DLC to come for Burnout Paradise. The Carson Extreme Hot Rod will be one of 2 special cars coming out in the Burnout Paradise Boost Specials Pack in 2009.”>Burnout Paradise next year. Here’s the teasers from thePlayStation Blog:

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 Hot Rod will be one of 2 special cars coming out in the Burnout Paradise Boost Specials Pack in 2009.

It’s hard to even decide what’s worth highlighting first when looking over the list of content that’s been released on the PlayStation Store yesterday. In terms of downloadable games on just PlayStation 3, you’ve got Mega Man 9, GEON Emotions, Burnout: Paradise, and WipeOut HD. Any one of those alone (with the exception of GEON) would have been a big enough release to take up a full week on its own, but instead you’ve got them all together and a whole lot more.

Those who just picked up the recently released Buzz! Quiz TV will either be very happy or very annoyed to hear that there are already three question packs available. The videogames and sci-fi packs will run you $6 and add over 500 questions each, while the Safari pack costs $8 for some seemingly arbitrary reason.

Rock Band players can find new tracks and Rush’s Moving Pictures album, while those looking to sample out some games can find demos of NBA 09, NBA Live 09, and Mega Man 9. There’s the usual helping of videos, wallpapers, and themes — and we haven’t even gotten to PSP content.

The PlayStation Store for PC has two new downloadable games for Sony’s handheld, both of which are $15 a piece: Untold Legends: Brotherhood of the Blade and Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords. Throw in a demo of Pipe Mania and a Buzz! Quiz Master theme, and you’re looking at what’s easily the biggest day for the PlayStation Store yet.

Criterion Games is finally dropping one hell of an update on Burnout Paradise owners this Thursday. This week comes the hotly anticipated release of the new Bikes Pack, which of course adds motorcycles to the world of Burnout for the low, low price of “free.” In addition to that, the pack will come with a few new modes and challenges to keep racers occupied, as Criterion details on their website:

• 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 customizable – 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

That’s pretty meaty for a free update. I’m still a little skeptical on how the motorcycles will work in the game though; since the Burnout series is known for its brutal crashes, but they never show a driver involved. Still, this should all definitely keep Burnout Paradise players happy.

Via Criterion Games

GameStop and company absolutely love it when you buy and sell used games. They hand you $20 for a game you just paid $60 for, then turn around and sell it for $55 which — for the price-conscientious consumer — makes much more fiscal sense than paying a few dollars more for a new copy. That money adds up, so who can blame them? It’s a win-win situation as far as retailers and consumers go, but the sales of used games are of no benefit to the developers and publishers who see nothing come their way each time a used game is sold. But just how much of a detriment are these second-hand sales to game companies?

If we’re to believe Electronic Arts senior VP and general manager for European publishing Jens Uwe Intat, it’s a “critical situation.” Speaking with GamesIndustry.biz on the matter, Intat claimed that comparisons to other second-hand sales in other industries (such as cars and books) aren’t valid, and that EA is trying to counteract used game sales by giving gamers a reason to hang onto their games for months after release.

“What we’re trying to do is build business models that are more and more online-supported with additional services and additional content that you get online. So people will see the value in not just getting that physical disc to play at home alone, but actually playing those games online and paying for them.” …

“In our understanding of the business model we are actually giving away the rights to play, and if you just pass it on, pass it on, pass it on, that is not comparable to second-hand sales in the normal physical goods area where you have physical wear-out – second-hand cars, second-hand clothes, second-hand books… they’re all physically wearing out, so you have an inferior quality product.” …

“But digital goods is not actually becoming inferior in quality, so people passing that on is actually very challenging for us.”

With that in mind, suddenly the tremendous amount of support for Burnout: Paradise makes sense. All of the game’s downloadable content is being handed out for free — certainly that’s not the sort of thing you’d expect from an EA-published game. Perhaps EA has been backing the decision to release it all for free as a method of convincing gamers to not sell their copies of Paradise. And don’t forget the recent announcement that the game would be sold on the PlayStation Store, which would completely remove the option of selling the game.

Outside of MMOs and subscription-based games, the Paradise model definitely seems like the most effective method for ensuring games aren’t sold more than once. One has to wonder, though, if the return they’re seeing really justifies whatever resources they’re pouring into post-release content. Hopefully it does, as any owner of Paradise will tell you that it’s been phenomenal to get so much bang for your buck.

Burnout Paradise might be the current king of free downloadable content on consoles, Warhawk is certainly giving it a run for its money. After releasing the fairly significant v1.4 update last month, we learned last week of a new update coming on August 27 that would add, among other things, trophy support. Game director Dylan Jobe has posted on PlayStation.Blog detailing many of the new features the v1.5 update will be bringing later this month — provided there are no hitches during certification.

In addition to trophies (of which there will be 56, some of which will be retroactive as previously reported), custom soundtrack support will be added. New training tutorials will make it easier for new owners and returning vets like myself to get back in on the action. The four tutorials, all of which are offline, will focus on the game’s three modes of transport in the game: infantry, ground vehicles, and aircraft. Don’t expect anything advanced, but it should lay the groundwork for anyone.

Some other minor features will be added as well, including the ability to retract clan invites, new paint schemes and insignias to tag your aircraft with, a ceremonial knife for those who played in the recent GGL Warhawk tournament, and a server color-coding for “rookie” servers. It seems like a lot of what they’re trying to do is help ease new players in, which is a wise decision with the recent price drop. Besides, they want people to keep playing their game and check out all of that downloadable content that they don’t give away for free.

The codename Cagney update was only just released this Monday on Xbox 360 after a nearly month-long delay (PS3 owners got it back on July 10), and developer Criterion Games is already talking about the next significant update to Burnout Paradise. It’s been known for quite a while now that Criterion was looking at adding bikes to Paradise – an area that’s never been tread upon by the Burnout series previously. A new post on PlayStation.Blog reveals that we’re roughly a month away from the release of the Burnout Paradise Bikes Pack. Hopefully this time 360 owners won’t have to sit around twiddling their thumbs while the update makes its way through Microsoft’s certification process.

Previously known as the codename Davis pack, the next free update for Paradise will include more than just bikes — you’ll be able to explore Paradise City at night as the city goes a day-to-night cycle. (Animal Crossing vets know there’s no better time to cruise the streets than 3 A.M.) Nighttime seems like an ideal addition to go along with bikes; who really wants to deal with rush hour traffic when you’re trying to max out the speedometer on your FV1100 street bike or Japanese Firehawk racing bike, both of which will be available to you from the start.

There’s even more in store, with a new twist to Burning Route challenges when playing at night and 70 new, bike-specific challenges. This is truly a phenomenal example of excellent post-release support — one of the few comparisons I can draw is to a developer like Valve, which has release a fair amount of new content for Team Fortress 2 since it was released last year. This amount of free content is almost unheard of on consoles, though, which makes me wonder if this isn’t EA’s attempt at trying to match the long shelf life that many of Nintendo’s games see.

After many a delay, the Codename Cagney update will finally be released to the Xbox 360 version of Burnout Paradise on Monday, August 4. After originally being scheduled for a simultaneous release with the PlayStation 3 release on July 10, Criterion Games hasn’t been particularly forthcoming about the situation.

Last Friday, a post on the game’s official blog said that they were aiming for August 4. They also added that it was “the EARLIEST we can expect it to be available,” which didn’t bode particularly well.

But at long last, those of us with the Xbox 360 version of Paradise will finally be able to check out this free update on Monday. You can see the full list of new content here; some of the highlights include two new cars, 70 new challenges, and three new Freeburn modes.

There’s a tremendous amount of new stuff in the update, but after having to wait nearly a full month, my excitement has understandably diminshed.

Remember earlier this month when the Codename Cagney update for Burnout Paradise was delayed a few days on Xbox 360? Originally scheduled to come out on July 10 — which it did on PlayStation 3 — and then pushed back to July 14, the update still hasn’t been released.

Developer Criterion Games has posted on the game’s official blog that they’re “currently aiming for 4th August” but that it’s “the EARLIEST we can expect it to be available.” That would peg it almost a full month after it was released on PS3, and that’s with the hopeful expectation that it actually makes it out on August 4.

The update includes several new game modes, cars, challenges, and other features.

Offering an apology along with the news, Criterion explained that they’re in the final stages of testing a revised version of the update. A release date will be announced as soon as they have one. In other words, nobody knows when the hell it’s coming out.

If you chose the PlayStation 3 version of Burnout Paradise over its Xbox 360 counterpart, Codename: Cagney is now available to you, free of charge. Cagney includes a ton of new content, with everything from new game modes to new challenges to new vehicles. Criterion had to delay the release of the update of Cagney by four days. All of the content will be available to 360 owners on July 14.

Paradise’s new Live Page (seen above) is being touted as a cool new feature. Criterion posted the following on PlayStation.Blog:

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.

Major props to Criterion for providing such significant post-release support to the game. Other developers should take note — this is how you treat your customers. Also, coupons for free caramel iced lattes would be nice.

First, the less exciting and disappointing news — Criterion announced yesterday that it’s had to delay the Codename: Cagney update for Burnout Paradise on Xbox 360 by four days, meaning it’ll now be released on July 14. PlayStation 3 owners in the USA, Europe and Japan, on the other hand, should be happy to know that the update has been approved by Sony and will be releasing on-time on July 10.

As the owner of the Xbox 360 version, I’m disappointed, as I was hoping to get back into the game with this update, but I guess I’ll just have a few more times to spend on other games. It’s not like my backlog of games has gotten any thinner.

Now, for that other tidbit (and it is very much a tidbit) — Evil Avatar noticed that on Criterion’s welcome page, among the many features being included in the Cagney update and other things that are in the works as part of the “Year of Paradise,” there’s a small mention of something big: “We’re even experimenting with planes!”

That isn’t exactly an official announcement; it’s a small mention (in parentheses, no less) after pointing out that bikes, nighttime and a new island are in development, but it’s still very, very cool. I’m not entirely sure how planes would work in the confines of the Burnout universe (there’s not exactly much going on up in the sky), but thinking about smashing planes into one another in slow-mo is very appealing to me.

Even if planes never make it into the game, I still applaud Criterion for all of the support that Paradise has gotten.