Swedish game developer SimBin Development team with partner Eurosport, has presented the development version of upcoming World Touring Car Championship game, the RACE. The RACE will allow gamers to get right behind the wheel of Augusto Farfus' N.technology Alfa 156 and race against rival cars from BMW, SEAT and Chevrolet.

Based on WTCC, one of only three official FIA world championships alongside Formula 1 and WRC, the exclusive RACE franchise will brake through as a newcomer that without any hesitation is aiming straight for the top of the racing game genre. RACE will feature the complete WTCC championship season of 2006; all the cars, drivers and locations and among these there are several official tracks and cars brand new to the racing game genre.

"As RACE looks and feel we are both proud and also sure of the fact that this game will be a complete success which will strengthen WTCC as a brand and secure a broader base of fans for the cars and stars of our championship," Jaques Behar, KSO Chairman and Eurosport Managing Director comments.

"The nature of WTCC, which is based on race tuned cars seen on the streets every day, and the tight sprint racing in a two-race format, guarantees the player more intensity and bumper to bumper action than found in any other racing game on the market, says Henrik Roos, CEO, SimBin. A very close collaboration with the organisation, car manufacturers, teams and drivers involved in the WTCC have provided SimBin with all the invaluable assets to make this production feasible. This covers all the data needed to be able to recreate the championship down to the smallest details on the cars, tracks and teams. "All in all RACE has been a new challenge for SimBin to recreate due to its major differences in style from previous games in SimBin´s portfolio," says Tomas Karlsson, COO, SimBin.
 

In cooperation with Eurosport, RACE will be assured a place in the store’s front shelves as well as on TV through heavy, global marketing from Eurosport and SimBin. The RACE game PC demo, now available for download, features the Seat León and the BMW 320i, and the Brands Hatch racetrack. Next to the over 35 officially licensed touring cars there will be two additional classes, WTCC 87 and the 2006 Mini Cooper Challenge. WTCC 87 will give gamers the chance to drive two of the most fabled cars from this era, the Alfa Romeo 75 Turbo and the BMW E30 M3. These classic touring cars were the stars in the only ever Touring Car World Championship to take place before Andy Priaulx won the revived World Championship in 2005. They were driven by names that are part of the 2006 season as well, such as Gabriele Tarquini (SEAT) and Nicola Larini (Chevrolet) and Roberto Ravaglia (Team Manager BMW Italy-Spain) who won the championship that year.

SimBin Development Team AB is a Swedish game developing company making interactive entertainment with focus on the highest simulated gaming realism for all leading gaming platforms. The company possesses a global distribution network with its main markets in Europe and the US. SimBin was founded in 2003 and has a total staff of seventy people, consisting of fifty employees at the headquarters in Vara and the development studio in Gothenburg, and 20 distributed consultants world wide. In the SimBin portfolio you will find award winning titles like "GTR - FIA GT Racing Game", "GT Legends" and “GTR 2 – FIA GT Racing Game”.

KSO (Kigema Sport Organisation) was established in 2001 and belongs at 100 percent to Eurosport. KSO/Eurosport is the promoter of the FIA World Touring Car Championship, and has greatly contributed to the success and expansion of the Championship. KSO has also played a significant role in the launch of the new FIA Super 2000 technical regulations and their diffusion in a number of national championships wordwide. The Eurosport Group is today the leading multimedia platform in Europe with Eurosport, Eurosport 2, Eurosportnews, Sportitalia, eurosport.com and Eurosport Mobile. The pan-European channel Eurosport is available in 20 different languages, reaching over 108 million homes and 21 million viewers per day across 54 countries. Eurosport is the official Host Broadcaster of the FIA WTCC. It distributes its WTCC programs worldwide on 24 terrestrial channels, and 14 cable satellite networks. Around 450 millions viewers have followed the WTCC action during 2006.