Tencent’s Timi Studios, maker of Honour of Kings and Call of Duty Mobile, pulls in US$10 billion in 2020
- Big revenue gains give heft to Tencent’s ambitions to expand in ‘AAA’ titles on platforms such as PC, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch and Xbox
- Tencent made 23 per cent of its 2019 gaming revenue from overseas, but it hopes to eventually raise that to half
Chinese tech giant Tencent’s Timi Studios, maker of popular video games Honour of Kings and Call of Duty Mobile, generated revenue of US$10 billion last year, two people with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
The US$10 billion would make Timi the world’s largest developer, the sources say, which many industry watchers had suspected to be the case.
It also provides a hefty basis for its ambitions to move beyond mobile games and compete directly with global heavyweights developing expensive “AAA” titles on platforms such as desktop computers, Sony’s PlayStation, Nintendo’s Switch and Microsoft’s Xbox.
In a recruitment notice last month, a Timi engineer wrote that the company aims to create a new AAA game that resembles the virtual community from the movie Ready Player One, and will “compete head-to-head against big powers from Japan, Korea, Europe and US”
Tencent is building studios overseas, including one for Timi and one for Lightspeed and Quantum, both in Los Angeles, with the goal of creating content with original intellectual property that has global appeal.
Tencent aims eventually to derive half its game revenue from overseas, from 23 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2019, the most recently available figure.
