Tencent Acquires Japanese Gaming Studio ‘Wake Up’ Behind Nintendo Switch Titles in $44 Million Deal

Wake Up owns Tokyo-based Soleil, which helped develop Nintendo Switch hits Ninjala and Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes.

By Agence France-Presse | Updated: 12 November 2021 13:08 IST

Tencent Acquires Japanese Gaming Studio ‘Wake Up’ Behind Nintendo Switch Titles in $44 Million Deal

Tencent's lucrative gaming empire has been battered by a state regulatory crackdown

Highlights

Tencent has taken about a 90 percent stake in Wake Up
Regulators have also slowed approvals for publishing new games
Tencent was also told to relinquish its exclusive music label rights

Chinese games and messaging colossus Tencent has acquired the Japanese creative studio behind several hit Nintendo Switch titles, a report Friday said, as it seeks to recover from a government crackdown on the gaming sector.

Tencent has taken about a 90 percent stake in Wake Up Interactive for more than JPY 5 billion yen (roughly Rs. 326 crore), Bloomberg News reported, quoting unidentified people with knowledge of the deal.

Wake Up owns Tokyo-based Soleil, which helped develop Nintendo Switch hits Ninjala and Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes, Bloomberg said.

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Tencent's lucrative gaming empire has been battered by a state regulatory crackdown that has cut the amount of time school children are allowed to spend playing games.

Players under 12 are now restricted from making in-game purchases, and under-18s are locked out of games after two hours during holidays and after one hour on school nights.

Regulators have also slowed approvals for publishing new games as part of a broader crackdown on tech giants.

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The Wake Up purchase, transacted in September, is one of several deals that Tencent has struck with privately-held game makers in Japan this year, Bloomberg said.

Tencent said earlier this week that its revenues in the third quarter of this year rose 13 percent, the slowest pace since the company went public in 2004, according to Bloomberg.

In September, scores of Chinese video game makers including Tencent vowed to better police their products for "politically harmful" content and enforce the curbs on underage players.

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Tencent was also told earlier this year to relinquish its exclusive music label rights by the market regulator, which said it had violated antitrust laws.

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Nintendo Switch

REVIEW
KEY SPECS
NEWS

Good
Sturdy build quality
Region-free store
Easy to use interface
Seamless switch between portable and home console use

Bad
Screen is easy to scratch
Can't pause downloads

Read detailed Nintendo Switch review

HDD 32GB

Processor ARM Cortex Octa-Core

Graphics NVIDIA G20M Maxwell-based GPU

RAM 4GB

USB 1 USB 3.0 port, 2 USB 2.0 ports (on dock) 1 USB Type-C port (on unit)

Weight 297g (unit only), 694g (unit + dock)

Ethernet No

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