Global gaming CEO Michelle Liu (Tencent) recently answered the media about the company’s international strategy, the impact of China’s restrictive policy, and how to build a mobile game strategy.
Tencent has always looked beyond the borders of the Chinese market when developing its game empire. The past two years have seen that plan progress significantly. While the company continues to generate most of its game revenue from titles in China, Tencent is increasingly investing more and more in overseas operations and partners, even opening several TiMi studios in the West in the hope that the company might become a new empire.
“We think a good game release strategy is to look at the entire market and aggressively launch the global version of any game, rather than go for individual steps” – CEO Michelle Liu speak. Ms. Liu added: “We cannot assume that one version of the game is suitable for all regions. So the next step is to implement flexible distribution solutions for different regions, especially some key tier one areas.”
Tencent through its Level Infinite publishing brand has been doing a lot of marketing for game developers in the Asian market. This has helped make Asia an important release region for the game, a launching pad to build on the success of the global release.
Ms. Liu cited the example of PUBG Mobile, which was released by Tencent together with Krafton (although no longer related to the Indian version due to the government’s ban on apps from Chinese companies) but has become a success. in the largest markets are the Middle East and North Africa. This proves that Tencent can contribute to the success of the domestic market.
“I don’t think we’re only good at the Chinese and Asian markets. Tencent explores many other regions around the world,” said Tencent Overseas Gaming CEO. “We have the expertise and ability to operate locally around the world. Now, what we want to do is build a worldwide distribution system and we are looking for the best partners.”
Tencent has a very solid foundation for its global gaming operations thanks to its ownership of Riot Games, Funcom, Sharkmob, Leyou Technologies (including Digital Extremes and Splash Damage) and a 4% to 84% stake in Remedy, Epic Games, Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft, Krafton, Supercell, Frontier Developments, etc…
Although the company’s operations have slowed since 2020, Tencent has made a number of significant expansions to its global gaming business over the past two years most notably the establishment of multiple Western studio as part of the Timi group.
There are currently Tencent-owned Timi studios in Los Angeles, Seattle and Montreal along with Kaiju Team and Lightspeed LA, and even a development team in the UK city of Liverpool. All of this is primarily led by experienced AAA developers, with like-minded ex-employees who have worked on Halo and Battlefield games. They are planning on designing the AAA series of games, the multiplayer shooter and Honor of Kings: World, the open world version of Unreal then of course expanding the global release.