The Burnout series carries a certain amount of weigh within the racing community, because of it’s arcade racing style. However, never has the series deviated from its established style; each installment has always innovated on the previous.

Now, Criterion Games are ready to changed this with Burnout CRASH!, stripping the series down to its “roots” and changing its perspective for the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade. The main attraction behind CRASH! bring the “fan-favorite Crash mode to the forefront” with “a crazy mix of pinball and game shows.”

“Burnout CRASH! is a crazy mix of pinball and game shows,” said Richard Franke. “We’ve evolved the core gameplay which everyone loved about Crash Mode, and expanded the whole experience using music, style and Autolog to create what we feel is the most mindless fun you can have on any gaming platform.”

The latest addition into downloadable content infantry that is Burnout Paradise, Big Surf Island, will arrive on Xbox Live and PSN on June 11th – revealed in a spiffy new trailer for the game.

“Big Surf is the culmination of everything we learned creating Paradise City, and we want it to bring you a truly spectacular new experience – the highlight of a year of incredible premium content. Burnout already delivers incredible value for money – literally hundreds of hours of gameplay with your original disk or PSN purchase, plus more with the free Cagney Pack and free Burnout Paradise Bikes,” - Criterion Games.

“Burnout Paradise is a complete reinvention of the series, built from the ground up for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360,” said Alex Ward, director of game design at Criterion Games when announcing the game. “To create truly next-generation gameplay, we needed to create a truly next-generation game, from top to bottom.”

Black Rock Studios have been hard at work trying to push the racing genre by developing many over the top racers, seeing that last years high-flying ATV racer, PURE, was just the tip of the iceberg. The developer is now working on a street racing game entitled, Split Second.

An exclusive trailer debuted on GameTrailer’s GTTV showing cars flying into a city with dangerous environmental hazards – which are activated by the drivers in the game. This is sure to be something worth waiting for.

Anyway, Split Second is definitely a new look at the racing genre and we believe that the guys at Black Rock Studios know what to do, to insure that this a quality racer.

I don’t know about you, but the last big update of Burnout was just amazing, it added almost everything that the game was missing. But, that was for this year and it looks like Criterion Games is already thinking about ’09, but you may want to know why and I’m here to tell you “because they can.”

According to an official update on the Criterion website, they have already revealed the first big content update for ’09 that will  be added to Burnout: Paradise called Burnout: Paradise Party. The content update is said to add a more social asset to the game by joining players.

The new update will add three new modes Stunt, Speed and Skill. Stunt is exactly what it sounds like, Speed focuses on quick time trials and other timed challenges, while Skill requires you to race through oncoming traffic at maximum speed. They’re also going to pour on some extra Trophies/Achievements, so there’s no reason not to pick up the new Party pack when it becomes available.

[Criterion To Offer New Party Content For Burnout Paradise via PSXextreme]

Burnout was all about the cars but over at Criterion they’re looking to change things. That mean’s they’ll be bring something new to the mix, planes, some may think that this is taking the aspect of Burnout out of proportion. But, to Criterion it’s just moving on. 

The planes will be available for download very soon and expect to hear more word on more expansions to the paradise. We aren’t sure how this would work, but lets just wait to see how this will work in the world of paradise.

[Criterion Games ]

In a post on the Official PlayStation Blog, Simon Phillips Criterion Games designer made a confirmation that It’s open world set in the fictional Burnout Paradise City will soon support PS3’s upcoming trophy system after the future update Cagney which will hit on July 10.

As for the post made he did mention that the trophy support will be retroactive meaning that that the saves are locked into a single PSN ID with the progress that you have made in the game will be unlocked as the update is release.

Trophies, Timed Challenges for Burnout Paradise [PS Blog]