Tencent invests in PlatinumGames

Tencent made a capital investment in PlatinumGames, the studio behind Bayonetta. No details were disclosed, but the developer says that the deal will not affect how the company operates.

This partnership has no effect on the independence of our company. And we will continue operations under our current corporate structure. We hope to use this capital to strengthen our foundation as a business and expand from game development into exploring self-publishing. We also hope that this partnership can give us a wider global perspective, while still creating high quality games that stay true to our name.

Kenichi Sato, President and CEO at PlatinumGames

As for expanding the studio’s global reach, the Chinese market, for one, will now be more accessible to the studio, with Tencent acting as a localization and promotion partner, as well as an intermediary with the local authorities.

Bayonetta

This is in line with Tencent’s overall acquisition strategy. The Chinese giant owns 40% of Epic Games, 9% of Frontier Developments, 5% of Paradox, and 5% of Activision Blizzard and Ubisoft. Then there is Riot Games, which fully belongs to Tencent. Altogether, the company has stakes in about 12 studios.

All these studios, fully or partially owned by Tencent, have so far exercised relative freedom from the Chinse investor (other than Tencent allegedly having a say in Blizzard’s desicison to ban a pro-Hong-Kong gamer). According to VentureBeat, “the idea behind this strategy is to essentially make a lot of bets without having to do a lot of micromanaging or overseeing its own startup projects.”