China’s Tencent is still shopping in Western video games

17 July 202310 months ago babelfish

The English studio that developed Destruction AllStars and Switchblade has been acquired by Lightspeed Games. However, there is Tencent behind it: this is how it will play with Lucid Games and with the other software houses already in its pocket

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. And now Tencent is back on the attack, this time across the Channel, to acquire Lucid Games.

LUCID GAMES, TENCENT'S LAST MEAL

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.

We are thrilled that Lucid Games is now part of LightSpeed Studios family.

We'll continue to enjoy full independence in the games that we create and the operation of the studio, while having the support from LightSpeed Studios' global network and technology capabilities. pic.twitter.com/uLJW3vI3PI

— Lucid Games (@LucidGamesLtd) July 13, 2023

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 .

WHAT ABOUT LUCID GAMES WITH TENCENT?

LightSpeed Games, a subsidiary of the Chinese giant Tencent, has ensured that Lucid Games will continue to be completely independent in the development of its games and in internal operations, being able to take advantage of the company's powerful means from a technological point of view and its global network.

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 .

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 .

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-fa-ancora-shopping-nei-videogiochi-occidentali/ on Sun, 16 Jul 2023 18:07:29 +0000.