The Chinese giant seeks to expand outside of China with video games that can attract North American and European consumers.
That Tencent Games is an authority within the mobile video game market is a reality. His are hits like Call of Duty: Mobile, PUBG Mobile or the version for these devices of the success of Riot Games, League of Legends, which has already been officially announced. The Chinese giant, which has interests in Epic Games and Activision Blizzard, is preparing for the next step: developing console games. And not anyway, you want to do it with Nintendo characters.
Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, which Eurogamer collects, Tencent has expressed its willingness to expand across Europe and the United States through console video games. "What we want is to expand from China, and one of the objectives is the console players from North America and Europe," explained a Tencent employee, who has preferred to remain anonymous. "We hope to create console games with Nintendo characters and learn the essence of developing console videogames from Nintendo engineers."
My latest is about Tencent-Nintendo partnership: Tencent doesn't believe it can sell a lot of Switch units in China. Mario smartphone games for China? Maybe. U.S. game fans and how to attract them? AND IT IS!! BIG YES, sources say. https://t.co/IsQ6tGEty9
– Takashi Mochizuki (@mochi_wsj) November 10, 2019
Women, key factor
Another company employee adds that "Nintendo games are not built to make players pay a lot of money." In addition, "women are becoming a force to take into account in the growth of the video game market," says analyst Daniel Ahmad to the newspaper. "Chinese developers are not only modifying their patterns to focus on the players, but they are adapting existing titles to make them more attractive to them."
According to the WSJ, Nintendo itself has asked external developers to design their products to attract young women, such as "romance games, a genre that has passionate followers, even in China."
On the other hand, according to Lisa Cosmas Hanson of Niko Partners, Tencent seeks to dominate the global market through expansion, first with "small investments in industry companies", without implying changing the brand name.
Source | WSJ (via Eurogamer)
