There are heavy rumors that Konami is returning to the premium games market in a big way, with plans to revive some of its key franchises such as Castlevania and Metal Gear Solid. One of these posited plans is apparently a remake of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. But rather than handle it in-house, the rumors claim that Konami is instead outsourcing the project to Singaporean studio Virtuos. Obviously neither Konami nor Virtuos have commented on the rumors but, curiously enough, Virtuos has now announced that it is expanding and opening a new studio.
Specifically, the new studio is based in Lyon, France, with Virtuos saying that this expansion is a part of the company’s buy-and-build strategy to increase its global footprint and proximity to its clients. For anyone unfamiliar with Virtuos, it has primarily worked as a support studio, assisting with the development on games from other companies. Some of its most recent efforts include the Nintendo Switch ports for The Outer Worlds and BioShock: The Collection.
According to Virtuos, the Lyon studio’s founding team of 12 programmers will be led by Aurelien Kerbeci and Domenico Albani. Kerbeci, who will serve as studio director, has been working in the games industry as early as 2005. He started out at ELB Games, a French studio that worked on video game tie-ins for How to Train Your Dragon and the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland movie.
Perhaps the studio’s most notable work was on The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon, the final entry in Activision’s reboot trilogy for Spyro the Dragon. The studio shut down in 2012. Kerbeci went on to found Agharta Studio in 2008, where he worked for 13 years. Agharta worked on multiple original properties for mobile and PlayStation platforms, such as Stardust Odyssey.
Albani will act as technical director and leave the game development team. Beforehand, he worked for Eden Games, a studio which mainly focuses on developing racing games. Its most recent titles include two Gear Club Unlimited games for the Nintendo Switch (which released in 2017 and 2018) and 2018's F1 Mobile Racing for iOS and Android. He went on to be co-founder and technical director at OSome Studio and has 20 years of gameplay, tech programming, and engineering experience.
The new studio’s founding comes off the back of a $150 million investment from Baring Private Equity Asia in September, which is to be used to finance Virtuos’ buy-and-build strategy. Virtuos makes no mention of whether this second studio will lead to the company making its own original projects nor whether if it's working on the Metal Gear Solid series or even collaborating with Konami.