Tencent announced the establishment of its “extended reality” (XR) unit on Monday. Sources stated that the unit will be led by Tencent Games Global Chief Technology Officer Li Shen and will be part of the company’s Interactive Entertainment group.
The company announced many views for the metaverse last November but remained largely silent on these rumors. Three sources said the unit was secretly established earlier this year. According to Reuters, sources said the unit would have more than 300 staff, but the number of employees may vary according to performance.
Extended reality is used to refer to immersive technologies such as virtual and augmented reality, which are seen as the building blocks of the metaverse.
Since Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms Inc., announced that he would dedicate the company to this path, investors, entrepreneurs, and tech giants worldwide have focused on building their metaverse.
From Microsoft to Disney, ByteDance to Apple, many companies have announced that they have created their XR technology-equipped headsets and are working on their metaverse. This venture will be an unconventional move in the hardware field for Tencent, which mostly focuses its investments on software and games.
Tencent, which has reduced the number of its employees, has attracted attention with this move. Due to the global economic contraction, many companies, including Tencent, started to lay off their employees in the past months.
