He made the comment in a conference call earlier today, which was held to provide a “please explain” for the company’s decision to axe a whopping 1500 employees.

Next year, eh? Not bad for a game we’ve literally heard or seen nothing about.

Tiny versions of the cars based on Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, The Dukes of Hazzard, and Knight Rider are unlocked by completing various tasks in the new Big Surf Island content. It’s all stuff Burnout junkies would be doing anyway. You’re going to want to hit all 15 Mega Jumps, 45 Billboards, 75 Smashes, and complete all 24 Road Rules, so you might as well be rewarded, right?

Hit up the link below to see exactly which feat nets you which car.

Unlock Legendary cars (for free!) in Burnout Paradise: Big Surf Island [Joystiq]

Such a claim is “proof that you’re not the best,” Richard Parr said to Eurogamer. “It means you’re out of ideas.”

The line of reasoning – those who are truly pushing the boundaries of game development are discovering more and different things to do, not finding their options limited and shrinking. I agree. The capabilities of a console can be measured objectively in, say, polygons, framerate, etc. But the totality of a game experience? How do you honestly get to a point where you say “Well, that game is right at the limit”?

Criterion senior engineer Alex Fry chimed in: “You always find new ways to do things, the constraints lift. Not just with a new console generation but with every game you do… The constraints go away because you learn. While it’s nice to say you’ve maxed something out, there’s not really any point.”

Criterion: Nobody’s Maxed Out a PS3/360 [Eurogamer]

It’s not cheap, but it should be worth it, adding a much-needed infusion of new drivable real estate to Burnout Paradise, with a handful of new cars to boot. How much will it set you back? We’re looking at 1,000 Microsoft points on the Xbox 360, which translates to $US12.99 on the PlayStation 3. For those of you in foreign lands, that’s €12.99 or £9.99.

Certainly seems like a fair price to me, though your mileage may of course vary. Too much, or just enough? The comments section is all yours.

Big Surf Island – Pricing Confirmed [Criterion Games]

Tipsters who spotted the price page before it was removed said the game will cost $US12.99 (€12.99 in Europe, £9.99 UK) on PlayStation Network and list for 1000 Microsoft Points on Xbox Live. Couldn’t confirm that this morning, but it sounds reasonable.

The achievements page was dated yesterday, so perhaps it wasn’t a mistake. But it added 10 new Trophies, three silver and seven bronze, bringing the total in Burnout Paradise on the PS3 to 98. They are:

Drive through 20 Island Smash Gates
Smash 15 Island Billboards
Land 5 Island Mega-Jumps
Jump through Deese’s Donut
4.5 seconds of Crash TV Air Time
Complete a 750 yard drift inside the Inspiral Car Park
Complete your first Island Tour
Find all Island Events
Complete all 10 Island Freeburn Challenges
Smash all 45 Island Billboards

Criterion Games brags that the 98 trophies in Burnout Paradise is 32 more than the next closest game on the PS3. For the Xbox 360, Big Surf Island adds five achievements worth 110 Gamerscore, bringing those totals to 60 achievements, 1,250 total Gamerscore. The new achievements are:

Smash n’ Grab – Drive through 20 Island Smash Gates
Surf Boards – Smash 15 Island Billboards
Island Explorer – Find all 15 Island Events
Crash TV Air Time – Get at least 4.5 seconds Air Time from the Ski Jump
People Person – Complete all 10 Island Freeburn Challenges. These can be completed by 2 – 8 players

Big Surf Island: Trophies and Achievements [Criterion, thanks DCJoeDog, Jeremy, anonymous and others]

The Burnout Paradise Cops & Robbers pack introduces a ton of new police-themed makeovers for your favourite Paradise City rides, along with a brand-new online mode that pits criminals and the authorities against each other in a tug-of-war with a load of stolen gold. How much is all of this going to run? $US9.99 or 800 Microsoft points, with Europe paying €9.99 and the UK forking over £7.99.

Seems like a reasonable price to me, though I tend to prefer simply driving around and crashing into things randomly to any sort of organized play. So who plans on picking up the pack?

After more than a year of ignorance, police in Burnout Paradise’s Paradise City have finally caught on to the fact that the city is filled with dangerously irresponsible drivers.

This is a teaser trailer for the new Cops and Robbers mode, the latest in a long string of attempts by Criterion Games to slowly turn Burnout Paradise into a completely different game from the one we originally purchased. Not too much to tell so far; we assume there will be cops, robbers, and more than likely some sort of chase mechanic.

The only other thing we can determine from this teaser is that the Paradise City police department is ridiculously over funded.

Burnout Paradise gets a boost this week with the release of the Boost Specials Collection, featuring two “ultra-performance boosting machines” to add to your collection.

Two cars make up the Boost Specials Collection. The first, pictured here, is the Carson Extreme Hotrod, which Criterion calls the fastest car in Paradise City. It features a new vehicle dynamics system, granting it more intuitive handling and better drifting than any car in the game.

The second was supposed to remain a secret, but a Microsoft error that listed the downloadable content earlier than intended revealed that it is the Hawker Mech 400, a car that can be modified to drive the way you want it to drive.

The Boost Specials Collection hits Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network this Thursday, March 9th 12th, as revealed by producer Matt Webster’s Twitter. If the leaked data holds as true as it did for the Toy Cars Collection, it should ring up at 400 Microsoft Points, or roughly US$5.

Burnout Paradise is coming to the PC, in the form of an “Ultimate Box”, collecting most of the game’s updates and sitting them alongside the game itself. But what if you don’t want a box?

Then don’t get a box. Get an intangible collection of files instead! Because Criterion announced on Friday that The Ultimate Box will be available soon on Valve’s Steam service. Course, it’s already available on that other major PC downloadable service, Direct2Drive, but since so many of you use/prefer Steam you’ll probably be more interested in that.

After a false start in the middle of last month, Criterion is finally ready to release the Toy Car pack for Burnout Paradise, with the tiny racers speeding your way this Thursday.

Nine little racers make their way to the PlayStation Store and Xbox Live Marketplace this Thursday, adding a whole new, much smaller dimension to Burnout Paradise gameplay. With the entire game built around normal scale vehicles, it should be interesting to see what kind of trouble we can get into once we get behind the wheel of these tiny toy versions.

Criterion hasn’t listed a price, though the Microsoft screw-up last month indicated that the cars would be 160 Microsoft points a piece, with a tiny model of the Firehawk motorcycle slightly more expensive at 240, and the whole bundle running 1,000.

Criterion will release official pricing details and the full car list on Thursday morning.
Burnout Paradise Toy Pack Dated [Criterion Blog]