Podracing is back. After more than two decades without a proper Star Wars racing game, Star Wars: Galactic Racer launched today on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Steam, and the Epic Games Store, with a single global unlock at 9 AM UTC. The game comes from Fuse Games, a studio staffed by former Criterion veterans — the team behind the Burnout series — and it is published by Secret Mode.
Galactic Racer is not a straight remake of the old podracing formula. At its core is a roguelite-style campaign in which you play as Shade, a newcomer who earns a spot in the Galactic Racing League, an unsanctioned circuit on the Outer Rim. Runs revolve around a token system: lose your token and the run ends, but the credits and upgrades you collected carry forward. There are no mid-race restarts, which gives every event a weight that the usual arcade retry loop never had.
The vehicle roster stretches well past classic podracers. You can race landspeeders, speeder bikes, skim speeders, and full podracers across tracks on Jakku, Tatooine, Ando Prime, and other worlds. Fans of The Phantom Menace get a dedicated podracing mode with familiar faces like Sebulba and Ben Quadinaros — Sebulba’s craft reportedly pushes close to 1,000 km/h.
Reviews so far are mostly enthusiastic, praising the sense of speed, the track design, and the replay value of the run-based campaign. The recurring complaint is the lack of local multiplayer, a sacrifice the developers made to keep the frame rate locked. Online races support up to 12 players, podracing lobbies cap at eight, and crossplay works across all platforms.
Pricing starts at $59.99 for the Standard Edition, with Deluxe and Collector’s editions for bigger spenders. One launch detail worth noting: Amazon says Galactic Racer is the first AAA game to arrive on its Luna cloud service on day one. Prime members in supported regions can play the single-player campaign, Arcade mode, and Scenarios without buying the game at all.
Sources: https://www.talkesport.com/news/star-wars-galactic-racer-release-time/ | https://psxextreme.com/reviews/ps5/star-wars-galactic-racer/ | https://gamerant.com/star-wars-galactic-racer-review/