Tencent, Lego look to pull China’s games market out of the doldrums with new offering

Internet giant Tencent Holdings has teamed up with The Lego Group to launch a new video game next week, which could provide a spark to China’s US$38 billion games market months after a regulatory restructuring halted the approval of new licences and led to the industry’s slowest first-half growth in at least a decade.

Tencent, which operates the world’s largest video game business by revenue, on Wednesday ran three advertisements about the new game co-developed with Danish toymaker Lego on the official account of its Tencent Games unit in Chinese microblog Weibo. No details were provided.

“Today, we announce a piece of good news,” the advertisements said. “After a strategic cooperation in January, Tencent and Lego Group will unveil a co-developed game on September 19.”

The partnership between Tencent and Lego, which was announced in January this year, covers the creation of a Lego video zone for children on the Tencent Video platform as well as the development, publication and operation of Lego-branded licensed games.

It also includes the publication and operation of the online operation system for Lego Boost – a building and coding set that lets children bring their Lego brick toy creations to life – and the joint development of Lego Life, a safe social network for children in China.