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Early buyers of Namco Bandai’s PS Vita Ridge Racer game at retail will receive paid-for content for free.
At the launch of PlayStation Vita on February 22nd and for a limited time, boxed copies of Ridge Racer will come with a Ridge Racer Gold Pass. This grants access to five new cars, three extra courses, two music tracks and an ‘extended music mix’.
Those who pay to download the game and bypass retail will also receive the Gold Pass, but only if they buy Ridge Racer before March 31st. Those who want the pass at a later date will have to pay €6.99 for it.
In April a Ridge Racer Silver Pass will be available for €5.99 which includes even more DLC for the racing game.
Ridge Racer is the cheapest launch title for PS Vita with an RRP of 19.99, and contains just a handful of initial cars and tracks.
It’s not the first game to use a post-release DLC business model. Last year THQ’s console racer MX vs ATV Alive came with an initial 29.99 price point, but focused on a range of paid-for DLC. The publisher later said this was a noble experiment but admitted it wasn’t a great model for the console market.
Namco Bandai also revealed a Vita app which contains trailers, and a series of demos for its launch titles, including Shinobido 2: Revenge of Zen and Touch My Katamari. These games will receive ‘additional free and premium DLC’.
