burnout posts

Even though Electronic Arts already has two PC Need for Speed games in the pipeline (the racing sim Need For Speed Shift and the free-to-play MMO Need For Speed Online) two separate sources have confirmed that the publisher is also letting the Burnout team at Criterion Games take a crack at the long running racing game franchise.

EA's COO John Pleasants mentioned the news during today's William Blair 29th Annual Growth Stock Conference and Kotaku chatted with EA CEO John Riccitiello who also confirmed the news. Riccitiello said folks shouldn't expect a Burnout-NFS merger, saying only " . . . the team doing it is working on a revolutionary take on Need for Speed." There's no word on when the game will be released.

Last weekend we reported on a rumor from another site that claimed Electronic Arts was planning to retire their long-time racing game series Need For Speed. Now our sister site Joystiq reports that the Need For Speed series is in fact still in play and that a new developer is taking on the reins.

Joystiq, using their own unnamed sources, claims that Burnout developers Criterion Games will be taking the mantle of the Need For Speed series for one upcoming installment and that Need For Speed's previous studio, EA's Black Box team in Vancouver, are "most likely" shutting down. According to the story Black Box team members will be consolidated to EA's other, and much larger, Vancouver studio. We plan to contact EA to get the final word, if there is one, on this matter.

Since releasing a few, oddly sized, screenshots and gameplay footage of Burnout Paradise for PC, Criterion Games has been quiet about the upcoming version. However, as the team is hard at work creating fresh content (including motorbikes) for the console versions, its official site has teased the developer is experimenting with adding planes to the title. When the PC version of Burnout Paradise was announced, Criterion promised the version would include additional content, expanded modes and community driven content which leads us to believe the latest console updates will be included when it hits PC. As for the idea of planes in Burnout Paradise. We'd be interested to see where and how it would work.

Criterion Games have never ported one of their Burnout games to the PC before but it looks like they are going all out with their first attempt at the platform. The just announced Burnout Paradise for the PC will support a lot of different resolutions in addition to other features.

Criterion have released the first screenshots from the PC port and they decided to take an unusual stance; they are extremely tall. Very few PC monitors can support such a screen size but again this is Criterion's first PC Burnout game and they clearly wanted to make them stand out from the standard PC screenshot gallery. We also have the first brief gameplay movie that shows the game in motion. Again Criterion decided to go with a an odd ultra-wide screen ratio for the movie so what you are seeing below is intentional (you can download an even bigger version at Criterion's web site) So far there's been no word on pricing or a release date but hopefully we will learn more about their plans for Burnout Paradise for our platform soon.

If you've been hankering for a high speed arcade racer like the Burnout series on your PC, then you won't have much longer to wait. Electronic Arts announced today via press release that Burnout Paradise will be coming to personal computers everywhere and will have new additions such as expanded multiplayer, enhanced online features and community driven content. We're not really sure what community driven content could mean, but our guess would be the ability to record your exploits in-game and upload them to a website.

What we would truly love to see is some embracing of the mod community on PCs. Our minds just race with the possibilities! (Sorry, we couldn't help it.) It's worth noting that a release date has not been given, but that more information is scheduled to be released later today during a live webcast at 8am PST on Criterions website.