Ignite Receives $7.5M In Funding For Online Racing Project

Online gaming company Ignite Game Technologies has received $7.5 million in Series B funding to develop what it calls "a new era of online racing." The round of funding was led by Steve Belotti and Bill Budinger Jr, and follows on from the $3 million Series A funding the company received last year. In all, the company has raised $12.2 million. San Francisco-based Ignite is set to launch "a new live online auto racing experience," tentatively titled Sim Raceway, which it says will break from traditional racing games. The upcoming game will feature "a high-fidelity physics engine and proprietary player skill quantification technology," and is set to be fully revealed later this year. Jonathan Haswell, CEO of Ignite, said, "There are a number of great racing games on the market but the genre as a whole has seen little real innovation in the past 10 years." "Most titles make year-over-year incremental changes to visual fidelity and the breadth of cars and tracks on the disc - the eye candy. Ignite will offer a fresh take on the genre, one that rethinks some of the fundamentals and focuses relentlessly on a core aim of live multiplayer racing." The company was founded in 2008 by skill quantification experts Jonathan Haswell and James Synge.