Square Enix and Tencent partner up to make triple-A games

It feels like a while since Tencent has popped up (it’s about two weeks), but this time the Chinese giant isn’t here to gobble up a smaller company – no, a ‘strategic partnership’ has been announced between the company and Japanese publisher Square Enix.

A letter of intent has been signed between the video game publisher and – this is a quote – ‘mega internet service provider’, though details are vague for the time being. What we do know is the two will establish a joint venture company and that, interestingly, development of triple-A titles based on new intellectual properties will be worked on cooperatively.

In a statement, Steven Ma, senior VP at Tencent, said: “We have strong expectations for this strategic alliance with Square Enix Group. The alliance will enable us to couple our broad range of internet service capabilities to Square Enix Group’s superb creativity, and provide our customers with unprecedented content experiences on a global basis.”

Another statement, this one from Yosuke Matsude, president and representative director of Square Enix, said: “Tencent Group and Square Enix Group share the vision of utilizing technology and creativity to deliver unprecedented entertainment experiences and services to a global audience. This newly established alliance will be a strong boost to Square Enix Group’s strategy to diversify our content offerings and expand access channels to a wider customer base.”

Further details of what the partnership entails will be released at a later date.

This isn’t the first time Tencent has joined to co-develop games based on existing licenses, with the recent partnership with Activision Blizzard to make a COD mobile game springing to mind. And all of this is better news than what we saw from Tencent recently, with its profits falling for the first time in over a decade thanks to regulatory interference.