Starting now, PS3 owners around the globe will be able to download the hyped out of this world firmware version 2.40. Besides the in-game XMB, the most exciting new feature has to be Trophy support — Sony’s equivalent to the Xbox 360 Achievements. To detail the new features, Sony released some videos showing how the system will work, and later posted a Q&A session, covering some things that were not spoken of in the videos. One of the hot button topics was whether games will give Trophies retroactively, meaning we wouldn’t have to play them over to achieve trophies. The answer was a clear “no”.

One of the possible reasons for this deals with the leveling up aspect of the PS3 GamerCard. You level up as your Trophy count goes up. If everyone grabbed saved data online and imported it to their PS3, everyone would be at the highest level instantly. So it kind of defeats the purpose of accomplishing tasks and earning every trophy honestly. Sony decided to can the idea with the foresight of dishonest players in mind. Burnout Paradise however is a different story altogether.

Burnout Paradise is perhaps the only game to allow trophies to be given for past accomplishments. Simon Phipps confirmed this via a response in the comments section of his PlayStation Blog post (comment #39).  Apparently, Burnout Paradise uses a unique save system that is linked directly to each persons PSN account. This stops any rewards from being given to anyone who’s PSN ID is not linked to the saved data.

The patch that will allow trophies in Paradise won’t be a part of the now available firmware 2.40 update or Paradise’s Cagney update due out in a little over a week. We don’t know a date, but knowing the guys at Criterion, we won’t have to wait too long.

[See also: Burnout Paradise gallery]