China’s Tencent Holdings has been working to adapt acclaimed action role-playing console game “Elden Ring” into a mobile version, three people familiar with the matter said, as it searches for a new hit to refresh its ageing stock of games.<\/p>\n
The world’s largest gaming company by revenue acquired the licensing rights for the game by FromSoftware in 2022 and set up a team of a few dozen people to work on a prototype, the same year it bought a 16% stake in the Japanese game maker, the people said. But progress has been slow, they added.<\/p>\n
Tencent did not disclose its plans to develop a mobile version of the game at the time. “Elden Ring” was co-developed by “Game of Thrones” author George R. R. Martin and veteran game designer Hidetaka Miyazaki and is an action game where one battles mythical monsters in a fantasy world.<\/p>\n
The game, released in 2022 for $60, sold about 20 million copies in its first year, making it the world’s second best-selling game for the year. Its fans include billionaire Elon Musk.<\/p>\n
While “Elden Ring” was designed as a premium game with a set price tag, Tencent wants to make it a free-to-play game with in-app purchases, similar to the hit game “Genshin Impact” developed by its Chinese rival miHoYo, the people said.<\/p>\n
But the design of “Elden Ring”, which focuses on a complete experience after a one-time purchase, is at odds with Tencent’s planned model.<\/p>\n
Tencent and FromSoftware did not respond to requests for comment. The sources declined to be named as they were not permitted to speak to media.<\/p>\n
Tencent has previously encountered issues with adapting big console games for smartphones. It axed a project based on the popular “Nier” franchise in December over monetization concerns.<\/p>\n
Tencent has in the past year become more conservative in pursuing a game based on another company’s franchise as growth in the gaming market plateaus and hefty royalty fee can leave a game barely profitable.<\/p>\n
Beijing’s opaque game approval system may also leave a finished game hanging for months, if not years, before release.<\/p>\n
Still urgency for Tencent to find a new hit is growing, with its chairman saying that its gaming business was under threat.<\/p>\n
While Tencent’s past hits such as “PUBG Mobile” continue to deliver strong revenue, more recent products have fallen short of expectations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
China’s Tencent Holdings has been working to adapt acclaimed action role-playing console game “Elden Ring” into a mobile version, three people familiar with the matter said, as it searches for a new hit to refresh its ageing stock of games. The world’s largest gaming company by revenue acquired the licensing rights for the game by FromSoftware in 2022 and set up a team of a few dozen people to work on a prototype, the same year it bought a 16% stake in the Japanese game maker, the people said. But progress has been slow, they added. Tencent did not disclose […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-800872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-telecom"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800872\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}