China’s Tencent continues to shop European video games

28 July 202310 months ago babelfish

China continues to invest in video games from the Old Continent. Among the latest significant acquisitions of Tencent also the Polish Techland, known for its titles full of zombies

Europe, it is known, on the gaming front is unable to be as competitive as Japan, the USA and, now, China. But several countries of the Old Continent, also thanks to state subsidies, boast respectable software houses, capable of churning out titles that have nothing to envy to Japanese or American productions. We mainly talk about the UK, France and Poland. It may be a coincidence, but these three countries have become hunting ground for the Chinese of Tencent.

SHOPPING ACROSS THE TENCENT CHANNEL

The latest signing along these lines was the Lucid Games team. The newly acquired studio by the Chinese group was founded in February 2011 by former employees of Bizarre Creations, a videogame software house also in Liverpool known above all for its automotive titles (F1, Project Gotham Racing…) which had been closed for a week Before.

The new studio has instead made Destruction AllStars and Switchblade, but has also worked as a support to several prominent blockbusters developed around the world, such as Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Sea of Thieves, Nightingale, Apex Legends, EA Sports PGA Tour and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.

And it also included PlayTonic in the package, which instead consists of former Rare (British software house that in the 90s signed masterpieces such as Donkey Kong Country, 007 GoldenEye, Perfect Dark, Banjo-Kazooie) , resized in talent after the purchase from part of Microsoft, although of late it has been churning out the fun Sea of Thieves.

In PlayTonic we find ex Rares such as Gavin Price (head of the company), Chris Sutherland (main programmer of Donkey Kong Country ) and Steve Mayles. The Chinese investment will allow the British to develop a third chapter of their Yooka-Laylee, a 3D platformer that blatantly refers to one of Rare's most popular video games from the Nintendo 64 era: Banjo-Kazooie .

THE COURT OF UBISOFT CONTINUES IN FRANCE

We had let the Asian Chinese giant devour an important part of Ubisoft, the French software house now present all over the world, with an investment of 297.3 million dollars that would bring it above the 5% share purchased by the Chinese in 2018, to help the House of Yves Guillemot thwart a hostile takeover planned by Vivendi.

In the last few hours, the two software houses have signed an important agreement for the distribution of Assassin's Creed Codename Jade . The smartphone game, set in China in combination, will be launched in closed beta on August 3rd.

The publishing agreement signed between Ubisoft and Tencent should be comparable to the one that the American Activision has signed for Call of Duty: Mobile , where the proceeds of the game have been divided equally (50-50) between the owner of the intellectual property by CoD , and TiMi Studio, the Tencent-owned development studio.

This agreement, the leaders of the French giant say, is considered an important step in the long-term strategic relationship between Tencent and Ubisoft. We also recall that Rayman's software house is planning the launch of two other mobile games: The Division Resurgence , developed by Level Infinite and Rainbow Six Mobile , developed by Ubisoft Montreal.

TENCENT INVADES POLAND

After the UK and France, as we said at the beginning, the most prosperous country, videogame-speaking, of the Old Continent is Poland. And Tencent has set foot on it by acquiring one of the most established software houses: Techland.

The software house founded in 1990 by Pawel Marchewka, has made a name for itself only in more recent times, thanks to the first Dead Island and the subsequent spin off. Currently, he is back from the success of Dying Light 2: Stay Human , which has sold more than five million copies. Numbers that have attracted the Asian giant.

“I am delighted to announce a partnership with Tencent, which is poised to become the majority shareholder of Techland,” wrote the studio's founder. “This collaboration will allow us to proceed at full speed towards our goals: we have chosen an ally who has already allowed several development teams to be able to reach higher levels by respecting their way of working.”

Then the ritual clarification: “We will maintain full control of our intellectual properties, as well as our creative freedom, and we will continue to operate in the way we deem most right. I will also continue to serve as CEO for the firm. I couldn't be happier with this huge step we are taking and to be able to share the news with you."

THE LATEST MOVES OF TENCENT IN VIDEO GAMES

There doesn't seem to be any software house on the planet out of reach for the Chinese. Tencent had recently acquired Inflexion Games , a label based in Edmonton, Canada, made up of former BioWare members, starting with CEO Aaryn Flynn , who has signed successful sagas such as: Mass Effect, Dragon Age and Star Wars: The Old Republic .

But above all the noise was made by the news that Tencent Holdings together with Sony Interactive Entertainment have acquired a stake in From Software, the Japanese developer of successful video games such as Elden Ring and Dark Souls . Although, as VentureBeat explains, it was not a complete acquisition, as in the case of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft , but regardless of this it is still a very important flag placed with wit and strategy.

WHY DO CHINESE LOVE VIDEO GAMES SO MUCH?

Already in 2021, thanks to the lockdowns, video games had earned Tencent something like 32.38 billion dollars, an increase of 9.9% compared to the previous year, also thanks to growth in foreign markets.

In last year's ranking Sony, still crippled by the chip crisis that had effectively blocked the production of its flagship console, the PlayStation 5, followed with 24.87 billion dollars in revenues, Microsoft with 16.28 billion and Nintendo with 15 .3 billion. The latter, however, to be punctual, led the trio in terms of operating revenue with 5.4 billion dollars, surpassing Sony at 2.63 billion, while Microsoft has not specified this data for years with regard to the video game sector.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia-on-demand/la-cinese-tencent-continua-a-fare-shopping-tra-i-videogiochi-europei/ on Fri, 28 Jul 2023 09:28:34 +0000.