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 developers behind the popular Burnout racing series, Criterion Games have unveiled their newest project, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit — a title that’s said to take the Need for Speed series “back to its roots,” intense cops vs. racer chases.

Inspired by the classic game with the same name, Hot Pursuit lets players “experience the thrill of the chase and the rush of the escape as they play through full careers as both a cop and a racer.”

“We are honored and excited by the opportunity to reinvent the franchise for today’s connected audience,” said creative director, Craig Sullivan. “Our goal has been to create cops vs. racers pursuits that are so fun, fast and exciting it really brings to life the adrenaline and intensity of the high speed cop pursuit experience with your friends.”

If you were wondering if Burnout and Need For Speed were going to merge to make one total new kind of video game, they aren’t, John Riccitiello told Kotaku during E3. However, he did say something about the Burnout developers working on a new Need for Speed title.

When being asked if EA is planning to merge Burnout and Need For Speed together, Riccitiello told Kotaku NO but he did confrim that the Burnout team at EA’s Criterion Games, led by Alex Ward, were working on the next Need for Speed title.

“Alex is one of the people in the industry I would analogize to the great filmmakers, etc..” Riccitiello said. “He is a true creative visionary. We had a great fight about what the next Need For Speed would be like. Of course, he gets to win because it’s his call. It’s not that I’m without an opinion on it.”

However, that still sounded like a possible merger NFS-Burnout.

“I don’t think you can fold Burnout into Need for Speed, because a lot of people like Burnout,” he said. “We don’t have a plan right now for a separate major launch on Burnout, because the team doing it is working on a revolutionary take on Need for Speed. I don’t know, if Paramount, in addition to owning Star Trek owned Star Wars, which isn’t the way it is, I don’t think you’d merge them.”

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.”

A developer that’s best known for their hit car crashing series, once developed a shooter game that was more then amazing to look at, it was amazing to play, and the game was simply entitled, Black. And in recent reports it was indicated that Black would be getting a sequel.

And now, however, it seems that the game would not be seeing a Sequel, at least not anytime soon. According to VG247, a very “well-informed source” confirmed that the reports of a Black follow-up are “not true”.

This news comes after a reports that on the Criterion games website there was a listing stating a game for a release in 2009 on the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC known as Black: Second Mission.

A developer that’s best known for their hit car crashing series, once developed a shooter game that was more then amazing to look at, it was amazing to play and the game was simply entitled, Black.

Now, as it was pointed out by x360PlayDiary, on the Criterion games website there was a listing stating a game for a release in 2009 on the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC known as Black: Second Mission, which is most likely the sequel to the Black.

Hopefully soon new information will be disclosed and there will be official confirmation on the game.

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]