As confirmed by Tencent (HKG:0700) during its most recent earnings call, a WeChat social gaming platform is in the works. Now leaked pictures have emerged of third-party games that will make use of the messaging app’s gaming integration.
(UPDATE: Tencent responds by saying: “Tencent is in the process of building a mobile games open platform, which is positioned to increase engagement with mobile Internet users — both wireless QQ and Weixin/WeChat. To facilitate the testing of our new open platform, we are developing some games internally and also sourcing from third-party game developers. We are in the early stage of preparation, and have not released any screenshots or images of these games. As the largest game platform in China, we have deep respect for intellectual property and will work with related parties to enforce intellectual property protection on our game platforms.”).
As with platforms like Apple’s Game Center, or the gaming elements of rival chat apps KakaoTalk and Line, the titles will require gamers to sign in – this time with a WeChat (or a Tencent QQ) username – so that you can challenge buddies within the game. The leaked photos, as seen on iFanr, show three similarly named casual games. They’re called WePang (seems like a bit of a rip-off of Anipang, which in turn is basically just Popcap’s Bejeweled), WeLink, and a parkour game called WeRunner:
Tencent is already China’s top gaming company by revenue, with a range of both casual and hardcore games across numerous platforms. But its QQ-based social gaming, which is hugely important to the company’s revenue, is reliant on desktop gaming and its old-style QQ IM service, so Tencent needs to brings its game face to mobile with its popular WeChat app.
WeChat has over 300 million users in total, of which about 40 million are outside of China.
(Source: iFanr – article in Chinese)
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