It comes in the form of none other than a Gundam game, yeah that Japanese robot franchise that hasn’t really taken off over here, contrary to its popularity in Japan, China and Hong Kong.

What better way to kick that trend though, by announcing that a new Gundam game on the way will be going free to play much to our delight. The official name of the game will be Mobile Suit Gundam: Battle Operation and thanks to Siliconera and the latest edition of Famitsu, we now know that the game will be available at the end of June as a downloadable PlayStation title only.

The game will feature 6 vs 6 online battles with the main objective to basically eliminate your opponent power ranger style using a variety of weapons and other gadgets available. You’ll be familiar with the style of gameplay if you have played one of the various PSP Gundam games, but if you need a taster we’ve added a clip from Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn which will play in a similar mold to Battle Operation.

The game will be free to play, but there is no information yet on how Namco Bandai plan to monetize the game. Like CCP and DUST 514, there’s no way that the game is going to be completely free, but giving PS3 owners a preview of online battles for free is a very good way to tempt users into supporting the game with a small fee.

If you are interested in trying this out, you should bookmark this site as this will be the place where you can register for participation into a closed beta. The website is not live at the moment, but it will be towards the end of this month so stay tuned for that.

Are you a secret fan of Gundam games? We wish this Japanese favorite would be joined by a PS3 version of Korean rhythm series DJ Max, but we can’t get too greedy can we? It’s great to see this going free to play though, it looks like a good year is ahead for PS3 owners – long may it continue.