Nintendo entered the Chinese market, holding the hand of Tencent Holdings Ltd., the multi billion dollar chinese conglomerate that is earning some serious cash from its mobile version of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG). This partnership will witness yet another addition under its tent, with a new Pokemon game being developed by the two companies for the Switch handheld device.
The Nintendo backed “The Pokemon Company” has announced a new Pokemon game in partnership with Tencent’s Timi Studio. This will further strengthen the friendship between the two companies and will immensely strengthen Tencent’s already strong mobile gaming portfolio.
Last year in August, the Japan gaming behemoth set out to enter the biggest gaming market on the face of this Earth, China. Even though the country owns this majestic title, mostly due to the insane number of clients it has, most of the market is saturated by players in the smartphone and PC markets. Console manufacturers have only legally been able to sell their hardware in the country for a few years, following a ban first implemented in 2000. In fact, the very famous PS4 launched in China way later than it did in the rest of the world, hitting the shelves in 2015.
Thus, Tencent became the company’s godfather in the area, and helped it gain popularity. Both companies have been selling Switch devices in the region, which sold like hot pancakes.
Now, this new game will open up new avenues for this partnership, and players can expect many more titles in the near future. The game, dubbed “Pokemon Unite”, will feature hunts for Pokemon in a battle area, where teams will work together in groups of 5. The game will also launch on smartphones, which seems like a smart move (no pun intended), seeing how this opens up the game for way more users.
Tencent had announced last July that its Shenzhen-based Timi Studio was working on a new Pokemon title, and this announcement just confirms that. As we have seen in the past, Pokemon games have a huge market, considering the success of Pokemon Go. However, will “Pokemon United” be able to repeat the fate of its predecessor? Only time can tell.
