Gamervision raises $1.5 million private round

Another gaming site gets new funds for news, reviews, videos, a community, and a marketplace

Gaming site Gamervision on Wednesday announced that it has raised $1.5 million from private investors and anonymous “veteran Hollywood financiers.”

Added to two previous private investment rounds, $5 million in the first and $3.5 million in the second, the latest round brings Gamervision’s total funding to $10 million.

The Pennsylvania-based startup offers a website aiming to be a gamer’s paradise, collecting news about upcoming games, user reviews of recently released games, polls and community features, as well as game-centric blog posts all under one roof. When it was founded in 2001 by CEO Andrew Reisini, Chairman Ed Cohen, and Vice-Chairman Freddie Bauer, the site only contained news and reviews.

The Gamervision editorial staff consists of over 20 gamers and comic lovers.

Since the last round, Gamervision has also been bolstering its video content, uploading interviews with game developers, regular programming like “The MMO Show” (with a focus on games like World of Warcraft), as well as coverage of live events of interest to gamers, like New York Comic Con.

One of the site’s most attractive tools and the one seemingly destined for success is Swap & Sell, a platform for buying, selling, and trading games, consoles, and more. The service, which just launched in beta, could poach users from the heavyweight competition, like eBay, because Gamervision doesn’t charge any fees for using the marketplace. On eBay, always a popular hub for video game selling, both eBay and PayPal (often) take a cut of the seller's profits.

Today, Gamervision boasts membership in the tens of thousands and more than one million unique monthly visitors.

Gamervision last raised a $3.5 million second round in January 2009. Though the company said it would use the funds to flesh out its video content, offer more community-based tools, and develop an iPhone app, there’s little sign on their site or in the App Store that they followed through with that last promise.