According to Bloomberg, Tencent Holdings Ltd. is in talks to divest its minority stakes in several Japanese game studios, including Tokyo-listed Marvelous. Sources familiar with the matter said the move is part of the company’s reassessment of its global investment portfolio.
This Chinese gaming giant is evaluating its minority stakes in several studios, and some people familiar with the matter say that, for certain projects, Tencent is prepared to sell its shares back to the original management teams, even if that means incurring a loss.
Tencent is juggling two challenges at once: the ongoing slump in the gaming industry and the need to catch up with competitors Alibaba and ByteDance in the capital-intensive AI race. The company is taking a critical look at its investment portfolio, assessing which projects still have the potential to become high-performing assets, while making a new round of investments in areas where it sees growth opportunities.
A source familiar with the matter, who declined to be named due to the sensitive nature of internal decision-making, said that one of Tencent’s criteria for exiting an investment is whether the synergies originally anticipated between the investment and the portfolio company have diminished.
Marvelous is an iconic example that illustrates Tencent’s series of investment moves in Japan around 2020. At that time, Tencent was actively acquiring minority stakes in creative studios it deemed undervalued. According to people familiar with the matter, Marvelous—along with other projects in Japan that Tencent considers underperforming—has now been placed on a watch list.However, Tencent’s investments in star studios such as PlatinumGames, FromSoftware (the developer of *Elden Ring*), and its parent company, Kadokawa Corporation, have not been affected.
Bloomberg reports that Tencent is adjusting its strategy on multiple fronts, including fostering closer collaborative relationships with teams in its investment portfolio.The company is no longer content to be a passive investor; instead, it is increasingly seeking to establish a model of deep collaboration with overseas studios—essentially co-developing blockbuster games—and taking an active role in helping them recruit creators and providing development resources.
Sources familiar with the matter revealed that Tencent’s interest in user-generated content (UGC) games—such as “Minecraft” and “Roblox”—is also growing. These games are dynamic because players constantly refresh them with new content.Meanwhile, Tencent continues to expand its vast international gaming portfolio on a smaller scale through various channels, including pursuing small-scale acquisitions in the casual gaming sector via its subsidiary Miniclip, making strategic investments through its early-stage investment platform Venture Lab, and conducting overseas investments through its two flagship domestic studios, TiMi and Photon.
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