Tencent, the Chinese entertainment giant, is teaming up with The Pokemon Company, managers of (what else?) Pokemon to make some games. The Pokemon Company are making the games with the help of Tencent's premier studio - TiMi Studio Group.
Pikachu volt tackles the Chinese market
With its extremely high population, China represents a gold mine for video game developers, especially mobile games. The Pokemon Company has an option with Pokemon GO, but the country has banned Google services such as GPS, rendering the game unplayable. In order to reach that market, The Pokemon Company is teaming up with one of the area's biggest video game companies. Tencent has announced via the Chinese social media program Weibo (with a repost and summary by @ZhugeEX) that they'll be working with The Pokemon Company to make a new Pokemon game. There's no word on what the game will be, but given Tencent's background, we can assume it'll be a mobile game. Leading the development will be TiMi Studio Group, Tencent's premier internal team that is currently expanding and has worked on projects like Honor of Kings, and Call of Duty Mobile.Interestingly enough, Tencent isn't the only company The Pokemon Company is working with. In May, they announced they would be working with DeNA to launch a new Pokemon mobile game called Pokemon Masters. In addition, The Pokemon Company is working with NetEase to bring Pokemon Quest to China. This last one is interesting given that NetEase and Tencent are rivals in the mobile market. Pokemon Quest will be the first Pokemon game to release in China.
In addition, there are a couple of other interesting tidbits involving Tencent. Earlier this year, they created a Pokemon Go-esque game called Let's Hunt Monsters. The game managed to top the country's mobile gaming charts during its April 2019 release. Also, Tencent is working with Nintendo themselves to get the Nintendo Switch approved for sale in China. The launch window is still unknown.
What are your thoughts about the Tencent Pokemon partnership? Are you hoping to play their games as well? Let us know in the comments below!
