While LA traffic is legendary for delaying cars, video game delays have so far been unheard of. Breaking the tradition, Rockstar announced that its two upcoming Midnight Club games have been delayed by one month. Midnight Club: Los Angeles and its PSP counterpart Midnight Club: LA Remix are now scheduled to hit stores on October 7 in North America, followed by a European release three days later; the games were originally meant to ship in September.

No reason for the delay was given. Just be happy that they will be able to make their way through all that traffic and get to places in one piece.

Empire Interactive today announced that FlatOut Ultimate Carnage will hit PC on July 11. The company noted that the game will be compatible with the Xbox 360 controller for Windows.

“Ultimate Carnage looks stunning on Games for Windows. Bugbear have done an outstanding job on delivering possibly the most fun, most brutal, action crash-em-up ever seen on a Windows-based PC,” said Sean Walsh, Product Manager at Empire Interactive. “Ultimate Carnage is set raise the bar for hi-octane destruction racing for the Windows platform.”

The game features more than 8,000 persistent objects per track, full vehicle damage and eight full offline game modes including Career Race, Time Trial, Carnage Race, Beat the Bomb, Last Man Standing, Deathmatch Derby, Multiplayer Party Mode and Ragdoll mini-games. It will feature full support for Live on Games for Windows.

The Need for Speed franchise has stagnated much over the years, introducing almost no new features over the last few games, and eventually losing its quality. EA CEO Jon Riccitiello noted his disappointment with Need for Speed: ProStreet, the latest incarnation of the series that was met with much critical bashing. He said that EA had been “torturing a very talented group of people,” referring to EA Vancouver who was tasked with 12 month development cycles.

EA revealed that EA Vancouver had been producing a new NFS game every single year for the past eight years. Thankfully, it changed last year when EA split the company into two teams, hried more people and put both teams on two year development cycles.

The next NFS game - Need for Speed: Uncover - won’t take full advantage of this new design philosophy, but is said to be a departure for the series, as it will feature a mission-based structure with a ’strong’ story.

“I’m confident that Undercover is a much better game than Pro Street, and I expect that from this point forward they will do a lot better,” hoped Riccitiello.

Another juicy tidbit from the recent Microsoft leak reveals that Forza Motorsport 3 is in development and that it will be released on two discs. What will these two discs contain? For starters, 400 cars and 100 tracks! The two-disc deal doesn’t sound so bad, but there will still be issues with disc swapping for which even MGS4 took a jab at the Xbox 360.

The leak also reveals that the game will have some form of “assist system” and will have car damage. No other details were revealed.

The game isn’t expected until at least late 2009. Further information is expected at E3.

Production has been completed on Fatal Inertia EX, the reworked combat racer for the PS3. The game is now ready for its June 19 release on the PlayStation Store.

Fatal Inertia EX is a retooled version of the 2007 Xbox 360 racer, adding eight tracks and a whole new difficulty level for veteran racers. It also makes use of the PS3’s Sixaxis controller capabilities, allowing motion-sensitive controls. The game will be a $29.99 purchase, and those interested can check out a playable demo soon.

The previously announced “Cagney” update for Burnout Paradise now has a release date – July 10. Being released for both the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions, the update will add three new game modes to the title’s online mode including Road Rage, a versus Stunt Run mode, and Marked Man. It wil also add 70 new Freeburn challenges, two new vehicles and other fixes and tweaks.

A PC version of the game is in development at the moment, though it is not known if these content updates will be added to it or not. Hit the jump for full details on the update.

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Major Nelson has revealed yet another demo that will be hitting Xbox Live today, Crash Time. You can find more about the demo in the exerpt taken from Major Nelson’s blog below:

Content: Crash Time
Price: Free
Availability: Not available in Asia, Australia, India, Mexico and New Zealand
Dash Text: [ESRB: T (Teen) DRUG REFERENCE,MILD LANGUAGE,MILD VIOLENCE] Crash Time: Play the demo and experience fearless stunts, spectacular crashes, and car chases at breakneck speed!

If you were a fan of the obstacle-jumping dirt bike game flooding the internet, Trials, then you are in for quite the treat. It has recently been announced that Redlynx Trials 2: Second Edition has hit steam for a mere $9.99.

Expanding on the idea of the original game by adding more than 51 unique tracks, updating the graphics and physics, and adding exciting new game modes.

This is one of those games where you start playing it and you blink and 6 hours has went by. Trials 2 will not be something you want to miss and to make it even better, up until June 4th you’ll be able to get the game for $8.99, a whole dollar off the regular price.

For more information on Trials 2 head over to the Steam page.

 
The acquisition of Project Gotham Racing creator Bizarre Creations by Activision last year saw many Xbox 360 owners wondering where the series would go. While the franchise lies in the hands of Microsoft, Bizarre will surely no longer get the chance to work on any other entries. With that in mind, Microsoft Game Studios VP Shane Kim provided a suggestion: get Forza Motorsports developer Turn 10 “behind the wheel.”

He told Kikizo that the studio is eager to allow Turn 10 to do “more creative execution in the racing space” and take a “fresh creative approach” to the fifth game in the franchise. While nothing is set in stone yet, Turn 10 will undoubtedly take over the series, maybe bringing its simulation roots over to make the experience even more enjoyable.

Remember how Criterion was hyping its updates for Burnout Paradise earlier? The studio has revealed that a new area for Paradise City will be released through the forthcoming Davis update (the fourth scheduled update for the game) this coming August. This new location will be the first expansion to the game.

The studio earlier revealed that gamers will be able to race across the city in motorbikes… at night, too. There will be specific challenges to suit motorbikes, so don’t worry about that.

Criterion’s third update for the game, dubbed Cagney, is scheduled for release sometime next month. The update will extend the multiplayer offering by adding new modes, including Online Road Rage, Marked Man and Stunt Events.

While it seemed like just yesterday the game was still called Banjo-Kazooie 3, Rare has now released a debut trailer for the upcoming Xbox 360 exclusive platformer, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts.

Featuring some exciting game play which focuses on collecting puzzle pieces to construct the various vehicles that were shown in the screenshots from Monday. Also worth noting are the different mini games the trailer seems to feature which include racing, and what seems to be a type of soccer played using your constructed vehicles. Well enough talking, you can see all mentioned above and more in the video below.

The first gaming series that comes to mind in terms of racing sims is undoubtedly Gran Turismo. The games unrivaled realism matched with its incredible graphical capabilities has helped the series as a whole pass a new milestone.

To date, Polyphony Digital’s Gran Turismo series has shipped over 50 million units altogether worldwide. With the release of Gran Turismo’s debut title, Gran Turismo for the PS1, the series has been reaching for the stars ever since.

Netting an impressive 2 million units, considering it isn’t even a full game, Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is the latest addition the series, marking the games transition to the PS3. With Gran Turismo 5’s official release just on the horizon, we can only expect to see these sales numbers continue to increase as the series progresses.

With Mario Kart Wii soon to be racing onto shelves, we thought some screen shots of the game will prepare you for what is soon to come. You can’t really tell from the screen shots if the Wii Wheel is going to prove to be a realistic controller for Mario Kart or if the hardcores will just go back to using their Wave Birds, but it will definitely give you a nice idea of what is soon to come.

Like [seemingly] always with Wii video game iterations, there isn’t much graphical improvements featured in the game other than updated textures and the like but, the screen shots do remind us that there will be all new tracks, karts, and motocycle…. kart… things.

Gameinfowire has a rather extensive gallery of Mario Kart Wii screen shots, totaling 37 different images, but I have gone through the gallery and picked out 4 [pictured below] that I believe give a good feel for features new to the Mario Kart franchise.

Not sure how to spend your Sunday? Well, if you’re even remotely into racing you might want to check this out; WheelSpin Studios has recently announced that they will be offering their racing game, Driver Speed 2, as a free download. Featuring [somewhat] photo realistic graphics and physics, Driving Speed 2 will allow players choose from 4 different V8 muscle cars and go head-to-head with up to 11 computer opponents. But that isn’t it, you can also get your buddies to download the game and burn some rubber in the online mode with support for up to 8 players.

While Driving Speed 2 probably isn’t the greatest game to ever grace the internet, again, it’s definitely worth checking out for racing fans looking to burn some boring Sunday time.

The full download clocks in at 121.78MB which you can get here.