Call of Duty: Mobile and PUBG Mobile boost Tencent’s revenues

Chinese megacorp Tencent is reporting a boost in year-over-year revenue thanks to the performance of its mobile division, including PUBG mobile and Call of Duty: Mobile, the latter of which exceeded 100 million downloads within a month of launch.

In Tencent’s quarterly earnings call, the company revealed its overall revenues were up 21 per cent YoY to RMB 97.2 billion ($13.9 billion) and profits up 23 per cent to RMB 25.1 billion ($3.6 billion), due largely to the two mobile shooters. Despite a 7 per cent YoY drop in PC software sales, the company was nonetheless boosted by a 25 per cent YoY uptick due in part to the success of its mobile business.

“We have made encouraging progress toward globalising our business, particularly for online games, where we created, published and operated some of the most popular mobile games outside China,” said Tencent President Martin Lau. “In the most recent quarter, Call of Duty: Mobile, which we co-developed with Activision Blizzard, gained more than 4 million five-star reviews on Google Play and a 4.9 rating on iOS following its October launch, which has become one of the most successful mobile game launches in the past couple of years.”

“We are increasingly developing games that become global hits,” added Tencent chief strategy officer James Mitchell during the Q&A session of the earnings conference call. “Call of Duty: Mobile exceeded 100 million downloads within a month of its launch, making this game among the highest impact mobile game launches in recent history.” 

“Since the founding of Tencent, we have always sought to provide the best products and best experiences to our users,” said Tencent chairman and CEO Ma Huateng.

“Now, as the Internet becomes more pervasive in everyday life, we believe it is important to explicitly state our values and motivations, so our colleagues, partners, and users understand the standards to which we aspire. Consequently, we have just announced our new corporate mission: ‘Value for Users, Tech for Good’. We believe these are not new principles but rather a reiteration of what we have always believed and how we have always sought to behave.”