Hang on... Hey, get out of the Unreal Engine, you pesky penguin!
As regular readers will know, Tencent (HKG:0700) is China’s online gaming king, in everything from casual games to MMOs, and by an ever-expanding margin. And this evening it’s showing that it’s serious about very heavyweight games by announcing its investment in US-based Epic Games, makers of the famed Unreal Engine that powers games such as the Gears of War franchise, and Infinity Blade. It sees the Chinese firm taking an undisclosed minority stake, with no financial details disclosed.
In the announcement, Tencent’s senior execute VP, David Wallerstein, who’s in charge of the company’s overseas operations, said:
We’ve developed a huge amount of respect for the Epic team for many years now, as dedicated players of Epic’s games and as licensees of Epic’s Unreal Engine technology. Epic’s deep commitment to quality across all of its games and technologies inspires us. They’ve been raising expectations in gaming for two decades now and they’re just getting started. We have a lot that we can learn from each other, and we look forward to supporting the Epic team as they embark on their next phase of gaming innovation across both emerging and familiar platforms.
California North Carolina-based Epic Games of course remains independent, and the company’s president, Dr. Michael Capps, said that Tencent’s investment “will empower Epic,” and give it “the opportunity to work with them [Tencent] to bring richer experiences to players all over the world.”
Earlier this year we noted that Tencent had licensed a different gaming system, Crytek’s CryEngine3 (which also makes Warface), to power its next self-developed MMO title. It’s not clear if the new stake in Epic will change that earlier tie-up.
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