Virtuos, one of the world’s largest outsourced services provider in the games industry, announced today that it has opened its North American headquarters.

Paris, November 16, 2007 – Asphalt: Urban GT 2, the sequel to one of the most successful racing games on DS has shipped in Europe and North-America today. Published by Gameloft and distributed by Ubisoft, Asphalt: Urban GT 2 was fully developed by Virtuos in its Shanghai studio. Asphalt: Urban GT 2 is an upgraded port from the high-end mobile version.

Gamesource, the European arm of Virtuos announced today that it has officially become an authorized Xbox 360 Developer.

Shanghai, October 30. Mrs Xu Meihua, Secretary-General of Shanghai Municipal Technology Committee, Mr Lu Jiye, Vice Mayor of Shanghai Changning District, and other leaders from Shanghai Municipal Government and Changning District Government inaugurated the Withub SIBP building and visited Virtuos on October 30, 2006.

Gamasutra and Game Developer magazine editorial director Simon Carless visited Virtuos’ new development center in Shanghai during Chinajoy 2006. He published a long report titled “Inside China’s Game Outsourcing Biz”. In the report, Carless notes how rapidly the game outsourcing market has been scaling up and how Virtuos is positionned on the high-end of the market.

Virtuos, one of the world’s largest outsourced services provider in the games industry, announced today that it has closed a Series A stock financing round with Legend capital, the independent Venture Capital firm under Legend Holdings, owner of Lenovo group. New Access Capital is the exclusive financial advisor for this transaction.

According to a new study by Screendigest, “a quiet revolution is transforming the games industry as developers turn to outsourcing to control spiraling next generation costs. Outsourcing in Next Generation Games Development reveals a sea change in games development that is resulting in significant expenditure being shifted to outsourced services providers, many located in Eastern Europe and South Asia”

The strong health of the China Games Industry was confirmed at its 2006 Annual Meeting on January 11 in Xiamen. It was announced that the market size was $470 million USD in 2005, a 30 percent increase over 2004′s subscribers and a 52.6 percent increase over 2004 income. Online games also provided a boost of 17.3 billion yuan ($2.14 billion USD) to telecommunications, 7.1 billion yuan ($887.5 million USD) to the IT industry, and 30 million yuan ($3.7 million USD) to the publishing industry.