Criterion designer, Simon Phipps, has confirmed via the Playstation Blog that the Playstation 3 version of Burnout Paradise will be updated to add support for Playstation Trophies “soon”.

Surprisingly he also confirmed that these Trophies would be retroactive, meaning that players will receive them for accomplishments and feats that they have already made in the game. Apparently this was possible because of the way Burnout Paradise save data is linked to players’ PSN accounts. This does mean that we shouldn’t expect many other PS3 games to be able to reward the trophies retroactively.

In related news, Sony’s PSN director of operations, Eric Lempel has spoken to Next-Gen about how the company will be fully supportive of any developers who want to patch Trophies into their existing games, and of course they will support those who wish to implement Trophies in their new titles in the future.

Sony don’t appear to have any plans to make Trophies a universal system, like 360’s achievements are, but they did confirm that both Uncharted: Drakes Fortune and Bioshock will be getting patched too.

Lempel also confirmed that PSN will remain free, at least for now. “We’re happy with what we’re doing right now and we’re going to stick with it," he stated. "I think being free is always an advantage. The fact that it’s free is nice for consumers who want to try out the online experience, those who may be new to it and may not be ready to commit to spending dollars, and that’s a really good message for us.”

“Being free also gives them the opportunity to spend the money that they may have spent on a subscription on online items or online games instead. We have a ton of games for the price of a subscription and offer a significant amount of great original content that you can’t get anywhere else.”