Tencent Holdings, which manages the world’s largest video game business by revenue, plans to accelerate its focus on metaverse-like developments by forming an international team for a new studio that will develop games for the next stage of the internet, South China Morning Post columnist Josh Ye reports.
The Shenzhen-based company recently sent an internal letter to its employees. The letter states that a new “F1” studio has been set up under Tencent’s TiMi Studio Group, which includes employees in China, the United States, Canada, and Singapore. The identity of the company employees who received the letter was not disclosed due to the ban on speaking to the media.
A review by the South China Morning Post on the career page of the Tencent website showed that the new F1 studio currently has at least 46 vacancies.
TiMi Studios declined to comment on the F1 attempt. A representative from TiMi Studios said on Wednesday (October 20th) that the company is committed to the development of “AAA” games, but has no intention of talking about “trendy words” yet.
Tencent has largely avoided using the term metaverse when describing its future games as “AAA, open-world”. According to the report, a company employee who declined to be named said the new F1 studio referred to the “future—the metaverse—” for the internet giant.
Although a broad term, the metaverse is often used to mean the collection of virtual worlds that people access over the internet. In September, Tencent applied for the registration of nearly one hundred metaverse-related trademarks, including brands such as “QQ Metaverse“, “QQ Music Metaverse” and “Honor of Kings“.
Tencent’s undisputed place in the gaming industry also means that they have to keep up with the trends of the time. Although the company’s top priority is not yet metaverse projects, its behavior indicates that it is preparing to develop projects on the subject in the near future.
