Most people know Tencent for its various money-making mobile games, but the tech conglomerate also has an interest in creating the de facto Chinese metaverse. With Metaverse development at its height, the company is hoping to beat Meta’s advance in the region.
The race to the metaverse begins
Tencent has announced to staff the formation of a new unit to focus on “Extended Reality,” which is essentially the same as the so-called metaverse. This unit will focus on crafting hardware and software for the mixed reality virtual world, similar to Meta.
According to a report from Reuters, Tencent formed this team a year ago but it was shrouded in secrecy. The Chinese metaverse has been dubbed “Extended Reality” XR in the short term.
Furthermore, the report also says that Tencent is hoping to have 300 employees on the project. However, nothing has been set in stone yet, likely due to the metaverse still being a mystery to many.
Tencent has declined to comment on its Metaverse development, holding its cards close to its chest. Considering how the metaverse continues to be an undefined platform that businesses are betting the bank on, we won’t be surprised if we see other countries enter the race as well.
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Something new for Tencent
If you’re familiar with the mobile games Tencent has made and are surprised to see them involved in this, you’re not the only one. The report claims that this is Tencent’s first foray into hardware after many years of being a software developer. One might wonder why China would trust such an important project like this to Tencent but keep in mind that they continue to make plenty of money through the aforementioned mobile titles.
Unfortunately, Tencent has been downsizing quite a bit recently, which might be due to this new metaverse project. Tencent has been releasing a good number of its employees for unknown reasons and it seems like we now know what they are. We hope that the risk ends up being worth it, even if it’s for something unproven and unreliable like the metaverse.