FlatOut Ultimate Carnage has now gone gold and is set for release for Xbox 360 on June 22nd. The game is being developed by the Finnish company Bugbear Entertainment for Empire Interactive. Commenting on the completion of the game, Empire European Marketing Manager, Rob Noble said, “It’s done! All the hard work is over and FlatOut Ultimate Carnage is ready to hit the primetime and to take its rightful place as the number one destruction racer on the market. This is one game you need to check out for its amazing action, spectacular visuals and just superb action racing!”

Building on the success of FlatOut 2, including multiple Racing Game of the Year awards and its status as an Xbox Live multi-player favourite, European support is focused on Xbox 360 websites and Xbox live marketplace.

“The media is tightly targeted towards 360 specialist websites for front-of-site rich media advertising. Xbox 360 gamers will see the ads more than two million times. This will include video footage of the destruction racing and invite people to enter competitions to win the chance to drive FlatOut Racing Experiences. The video trailer is now on Marketplace, the downloadable playable demo will be next and www.flatoutgame is designed to deliver the feel of the chaotic destruction in FlatOut with video, 3D screens, music and a special focus on the new Deathmatch Derby mode” added Noble.

Exceeding the already high expectations set for the game, FlatOut Ultimate Carnage has been hailed by the Specialist Gaming media as one of the best looking and technologically advanced racing games on the Xbox 360 platform. “Wow, no seriously WOW!” wrote Xbox 360 World. “We’ve played it and we’re very, very hot for it. Beautiful” said Games Radar. “…set to take the 360 by storm” according to 360 Gamer and “…this really can’t be beaten” from Gamesmaster.

During September 2007 Playstation Portable owners will be able to play the new version of the classic SEGA Rally.

SEGA Rally on the PSP encapsulates everything its predecessors laid out when defining the rally genre; amazing visuals, superb handling and closely fought competitive racing. These three key features have been the chassis of development for SEGA Rally on the PSP, combining to bring players a thrilling ride through jaw dropping environments and against competitive AI, all alongside an instinctive handling system that rewards players for pushing their rally-racing skills to the very limit.

“The original SEGA Rally is heralded as one of the all time great video games and this new instalment on the PSP is a great example of updating a classic perfectly for today’s machines,” said Guy Wilday, Studio Director, SEGA Racing Studio. “With the addition of multiplayer Wi-Fi and online multiplayer, there’s scope for players to show off their skills against their friends, whilst the excellent PSP screen exudes all the visual qualities expected of SEGA Rally”.

All the environments from the previous TrackMania games will be in the United game. And here they are:

Stadium: With a Buggy/F1-car you will drive at arenas with mixed asphalt and dirt parts. The cars have much grip and to get the best laptimes you need precise control on the techical and fast stadium courses.

Island: Speeeeeed! The Island car is both speedy and will have you powersliding around the insane tracks. It’s big jump bonanza.

Desert: It’s soon time for the Paris-Dakar. But in the TrackMania desert you get loops and hairpins as well. The desert cars suspension reacts to every bump and you need to be a bit careful.

Bay: It’s a day in the city with your trusty old 4×4. And the occasional loop and rooftop racing, of course.

Rally: Go crazy in the wild. Dirt tracks and medieval roads and walls. Tight passages, river crossings and winding roads.

The Finnish racing game FlatOut 2 has now sold more than 500,000 copies worldwide during three months of sale in 2006. IGN.com chose it as the “Best PS2 Racing Game of 2006″ and G4 TV channel’s X-Play had it as the “Best Racing Game of 2006″.

A lot of FlatOut’s appeal lies in the destructable cars and environments. Bugbear’s own physics engine drives the whole smash fest and is capable of delivering 5000 fully destrutable objects and 40 deformable parts on each of the eight cars racing.

At the moment Bugbear is busy developing FlatOut Ultimate Carnage for the Xbox 360.

On the 16th of February Wii owners will be able to get their hans on the first Nintendo developed racing game for the console. Excite Truck promises easy pick-up-and-play racing with innovative control mechanism thanks to the tiltable Wii remote controller.

By holding the remote on its side the players can then tilt left and right like a steering wheel. The player also needs to control the landing of the trucks after the big jumps by tilting backwards or forwards to align the wheels properly to the ground with a perfect landing resulting in a speed boost.

Excite Truck is the first Wii game to make use of the console’s SD card slot, allowing users to customise the in-game sound. Players can select their favourite MP3s from a selection on their SD Card and replace the game’s music with those tracks.

Just look at the picture below to see what fun we could be having in February.

Oxygen Games are now announcing SnoCross2: Featuring Blair Morgan. It’s probably a sequel to SnoCross1 but Slipstreaming must have missed that game.

Anyways… it’s all about adrenaline and racing snowmobiles on snow. With thirty tracks, career mode, multiplayer and quick races you could be in for a snow racing treat. And without the freezing of body parts as a bonus.

In March 2007 (when we’re pretty fed up with snow in the Northern parts of the world) it will be out for PlayStation 2.

Oh, and what’s wrong with the “W” in snow? Not extreme enough?

The next installment of the successful Burnout series, Burnout Dominator, will be released exclusively for the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable.

In Dominator you will face off against rivals in lots of tests of your driving and drifting skills while dodging the head-on traffic. The game which is going back to its PS2 roots is being developed by Electronic Arts’ UK studio and will be released in 2007.

People who likes Test Drive Unlimited (I don’t) will now probably like it even more. For 250 points at Xbox Live Marketplace you can now download the Pure Power 2 set which features seven supercars.

The new cars are:

• RUF RGT
• Koenigsegg CCR
• Noble M400
• Corvette C6 Convertible
• Ferrari 250 GTO 1962
• Lamborghini Countach 25th Anniversary edition
• Corvette C1 1957 Hardtop (this one is free)

TrackMania United is on its way. The original game was released in 2003 and quickly became sort of an underground hit. TrackMania Nations which was released for free was downloaded over 20 million times.

TrackMania United will have a single player campaign with three game modes and nearly 200 new circuits with jumps, loops, ramps, turbo power and hairpin turns. All seven environments from the previous games are now beign brought together for the first time with each environment having its own cars and driving technique. Any of the pre-existing player-made circuits can now be used, which makes the available circuit count add up to more than 100,000!