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Tencent targets more console games as industry booms amid health crisis lockdowns and social distancing
- The Chinese internet giant recently closed deals with Japanese console gaming developers Marvelous and PlatinumGames
- A collaboration with Activision Blizzard resulted in Tencent’s most successful console-to-smartphone gaming effort to date, Call of Duty: Mobile
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Tencent Holdings is casting a wider net for content from console gaming developers, in search of intellectual property (IP) to create the next blockbuster, as the company races to meet increased global demand for new games.
Analysts expect Tencent, which runs the world’s largest video games business by revenue, to pursue more collaborations and investments in the console gaming sector, following its recent deals with Japanese developers Marvelous and PlatinumGames.
“Creating and publishing mobile titles based on well-established [personal computer and online] game franchises helped Tencent expand around the world, and this should remain an effective strategy [in terms of console gaming IP],” said Liao Xuhua, gaming analyst at Beijing-based Analysys International.
Shenzhen-based Tencent earlier this week spent about 7 billion yen (US$65 million), through affiliate Image Frame Investment, to buy a 20 per cent stake in Marvelous. Before that deal was made, Tencent and Marvelous had already started working on a new mobile game based on the Japanese firm’s popular Story of Seasons, the first version of which was released in 1996. Various iterations of this farming simulation game are played on Sony Corp’s PlayStation consoles and Nintendo platforms such as Switch.
In highly-competitive video game markets such as China, it has become difficult to promote a new mobile title that is not based on well-known IP, according to Zheng Jintiao, co-founder of online media outlet GamerBoom.
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