Tencent Holdings Ltd. announced its purchase of a majority stake in Wake Up Interactive Ltd., the creative studio behind several hit Nintendo Switch titles including the likes of Ninjala and Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes., Tencent paid over 5 billion yen ($44 million) for a 90% stake in the company.
Wake Up Interactive in turn owns Tokyo-based video game developer Soleil Ltd., which is directly responsible for the development of the aforementioned titles. While Tencent’s acquisition falls in line with its other deals with privately-held video game companies in Japan this year, this is the first deal in which Tencent took a stake as large as 90%. Tencent typically has a reputation for making smaller investments in companies.
For the past two years, Tencent has been actively seeking out companies in Japan with which to venture into the anime and video game markets. Japanese media conglomerate Kadokawa Corp. revealed that Tencent is looking to take a 6.86% stake in the company; an investment worth approximately 30 billion yen.
When questioned about the company’s latest investment activities, representatives of Tencent declined to provide immediate comment.
“Tencent sees no advantage in announcing a deal as it doesn’t want to alert the competition and give them insight into its strategy,” gaming industry specialist Serkan Toto explained.
