Tencent has clearly left its mark on the Chinese mobile gaming market. Not only does it reach out to 180 million daily users with its WeChat app across various game distribution channels, but it’s also left its mark when it comes to wooing Western game developers into lucrative deals.
Considering that Tencent had CNY1.8 billion ($291 million in U.S. dollars) in online gaming revenue in the first quarter, there’s no question that Chinese gamers love to play. That was about triple the gaming revenue of the previous quarter. So, Tencent has been trying to bring more products on board from overseas, in an effort to expand its available line-up.
Bo Wang, the vice president of business development for Tencent, explained the importance of such opportunities while speaking with The Next Web. “So, for Tencent, we have the biggest volume, the biggest traffic in China – and how to monetize this traffic is either through advertising or gaming, and we want to do both. Both are important,” he said.
He believes there’s room for expansion in the market, and getting games done in-house just isn’t enough to keep up with the demand. “For free-to-play games, it’s even more striking that the game content and game quality make a big difference. So in the long run, we think the innovation part, the creativity part, the unique strengths of Western (game) studios make some very good quality and fun-to-play games that address the market needs.”
Part of the difficulty in moving Western games to China is the demographic difference between the markets. Some 80 percent of China’s gamers are under 30 years old, much younger than the Western audience. “I would say that how to make the game easy to play and have interactive features designed within the game would definitely help the game build a massive audience here,” Wang said.
Tencent hasn’t wasted any time going after the “big fish” in the mobile market either. The company revealed back in April that it would be teaming up with King to bring a localized edition of the hit match-three puzzle game Candy Crush Saga to the Chinese market. It’s set for a release sometime this month.
“One of the reasons is that Western markets, for gaming, is still a console market,” said Wang. “There are many challenges for Western studios to learn how to make a commercially successful free-to-play mobile game.”
“That’s the strength Tencent has, to help our partners to improve their game development capabilities. We have done that on PC games with partners, and we would love to do that on mobile games with more partners going forward,” he concluded.
Source: The Next Web
