U.S. video game company Epic Games (hereinafter referred to as the "Epic") said on Tuesday that the company has reached an agreement with Tencent (0700.HK), aiming to the rapidly developing Asian market with a high profitability.
Being headquartered in Cary, North Carolina of USA, Epic today announced that Tencent had acquired a minority stake in Epic, but it did not disclose the specific amount of this transaction. For Epic with a history of 21 years, Tencent is the first outside investor. Epic's heavy head games include the Gears of War and Unreal Tournament series of games. In addition, the company is also the creator of Unreal Engine, which is rather po[censored] r. This kind of technology has been used by other game companies to develop cutting-edge games.
The founder and CEO of Epic Tim Sweeney said the deal also included the content of cooperation with Tencent, such as the use of the latter's subscriber base. It is expected that this will help the Epic to extend the scope of business to the outside of games based on video game player and enter the PC-based online games and mobile games. Sweeney said: "So far, Tencent has the largest subscriber base in the Chinese market, but also has impressive and developing business in other parts of Asia and South America. Basically, there is no place for business operation in Epic, but Tencent has a business unit."
In 2011, Tencent's revenue was $ 4.5 billion, an increase of 45 percent over the previous fiscal year. By March 31, the total number of people using Tencent IM service has been 751.9 million.
Sweeney said, different from the video game market in North America and Europe, these markets so far have always considered a console game as the center, but in the Asian market (excluding Japan), PC-based business has occupied a dominant position.
As for the future prospects, Epic plans to have a close cooperation with Tencent in the early stages of game development to find ways to maximize the sales potential in the Asian market, especially in the Chinese market. Sweeney said his goal is "to develop the global games that can succeed in the global market". Prior to this, Epic, and Tencent had already had long-term business relationship, and the latter used Epic's "virtual engine" technology through authorization.
