Ridge Racer Driftopia Going Free-2-Play On PC, PlayStation 3 This Year

The last time we saw Ridge Racer in action it was in Bugbear Interactive’s lively Unbounded, a game that broke all the rules with plenty of fast-paced street racing and destructive mayhem.  Now it looks like there will be more where that came from.

Namco Bandai has announced that Bugbear is working on a new Ridge Racer game for PlayStation 3 and PC titled Ridge Racer Driftopia.  You can probably expect the racing model from Unbounded to still be intact, but there’s a different approach with this one – it’s free to play with the option to buy additional cars, repair kits and XP packs through Microtransactions.

The game doesn’t have a release date as of yet, but it’ll be coming sometime this year.  We’ll have a better glimpse at it in the months ahead, probably at Namco’s booth at E3 in June.  In the meantime, “drift” on over to YouTube to check out the debut trailer for the game, and see if you can manage to get through a lap without yelling, “It’s Ridge Racer!  RIIIIIDGE RACER!”  (We can’t.)