I saw an article on www.ps3forums.com which is an excerpt from an interview with Evolution about Motorstorm.

Does anyone know the likelyhood of a patch to allow online play for the Jap version of the game. I have the game and is great but it would be great to add online play at a later date...

Not sure how achievable this is ?

If there is to be a patch I imagine it will come along when the online versions arrive (i.e. US/EUR versions).

Be interesting if this is achievable though.

The same interview referred to evolution considering adding splitscreen via a downloadable patch if the demand was there, so i can't see why they couldn't add online via a patch.

Kameo on xbox360 had co-operative play over live added via a download so i guess that's evidence you can add some form of online play via a download (i know different console/developing environment - but the principle is the same)

One of the member's over on ntsc-uk worked on (or is still working on I guess) Motorstorm. He's confirmed that there will be an online patch made available for the Japanese version. Downloadable content is also planned but he can't go into more detail about what that'll be at present.