Steam’s greatest competitor within the West might be GOG, however in China, it is Tencent, one of many largest gaming firms on this planet (they personal League of Legends devs Riot). They’re already vying with Steam for a slice of that profitable market (fairly successfully too, with an estimated 200 million customers to Steam’s 125 million), they usually’ve simply unveiled a formidable subsequent section of their technique.
Some of the best games on PC are about to be unique to Tencent in China.
The headline information is the announcement of WeGame, a rebrand and relaunch of Tencent Game Platform (TGP), the corporate’s digital retailer. It was additionally revealed that Tencent have secured unique publishing offers for a number of main video games, together with Rocket League, Cities: Skylines, and Paragon, in an aggressive push for the Chinese PC gaming market.
The information got here in Tencent’s ‘Up’ 2017 press convention, which Chinese business analyst Daniel Ahmad, of Niko Partners, was live-tweeting (and translating).
Tencent WeGame formally introduced. Will substitute TGP.
A PC gaming platform for Chinese players. #TencentUP pic.twitter.com/uAkjC5oX7Y
— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) April 20, 2017
Tencent additional introduced publishing offers to carry the next video games to China: Epic’s hero fighter Paragon; Ubisoft’s venerable technique collection Heroes of Might and Magic; Psyonix’s breakout hit Rocket League (in a free-to-play form); and Hi-Rez’s hero shooter Paladins. On high of all that, Paradox Interactive’s smash hit metropolis builder, Cities: Skylines, lately had its Chinese launch via Tencent (the devs even made an look on-stage at Up 2017).
Publishing offers for many other titles developed by Tencent or Asian studios have been additionally confirmed. And right here’s the coup de grâce: all these video games are not out there on Steam in China – they’re now fully exclusive to Tencent.
Market analysis agency NewZoo estimates Tencent single-handedly personal 13% of the world’s video games market, with important share holdings in among the next-biggest firms, together with Activision-Blizzard.
For us within the West, it appears Tencent’s ambitions are restricted to beating Steam in China – at the least for now. It’s not clear that they’ve plans to compete in the remainder of the world.
Source
