Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS) today announced that Burnout™ 5 is in development for the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and Xbox 360™ video game system from Microsoft®.

Burnout 5 gives players license to wreak havoc in Paradise City, the ultimate seamless racing battleground, with a massive infrastructure of traffic-heavy roads to abuse.

Gone is the need to jump in and out of menus and aimlessly search for fun like many open world games; in Burnout 5, every inch of the world is built to deliver heart-stopping Burnout-style gameplay. Every intersection is a potential crash junction and every alleyway is an opportunity to rack up moving violations.

Of course, rules are made to be broken, and when gamers enter Paradise City, they're assigned a Drivers License that quickly begins to amass a record of player's most aggressive, reckless and destructive exploits behind the wheel. But it's not the law that's eyeing player's progress … when gamers push things too hard they'll be squaring off against the city's most infamous burners, and these legends aren't interested in who crosses the finish line first.

"Burnout 5 is a complete reinvention of the series, built from the ground up for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360," said Alex Ward, director of game design at Criterion Games. "To create truly next-generation gameplay, we needed to create a truly next-generation game, from top to bottom."

Burnout 5 also delivers the next level of speed and destruction, with brand new next-generation technology allowing gamers to literally rip their cars in half, in the most explosive pile-ups in the series' history.