{"id":107691,"date":"2020-01-20T16:46:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-20T16:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/356908"},"modified":"2020-01-20T16:46:00","modified_gmt":"2020-01-20T16:46:00","slug":"report-tiktok-owner-bytedance-planning-big-push-into-mobile-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2020\/01\/20\/report-tiktok-owner-bytedance-planning-big-push-into-mobile-games\/","title":{"rendered":"Report: TikTok owner ByteDance planning big push into mobile games"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>TikTok owner ByteDance has been quietly building an internal game division so it can break into the lucrative mobile games market.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2020-01-19\/bytedance-plans-assault-on-tencent-s-mobile-gaming-kingdom\">According to Bloomberg<\/a>, the Chinese internet company has already purchased a number of development studios and exclusive distribution rights, and is preparing to releases its first two titles later this spring.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;People familiar with the matter&#8221;&nbsp;claim the company is specifically targeting the both the local and overseas non-casual market, and has been filling its ranks with &#8220;top talent&#8221;&nbsp;from rival game companies.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Although ByteDance has already produced a number of casual games that pulled in ad-based revenue, the company is reportedly keen to make a larger strategic shift so it can begin targeting big-spending \u2018hardcore\u2019 players.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>As such, its current game pipeline will include massively multiplayer online games with &#8220;Chinese fantasy elements,&#8221;&nbsp;which will be built by newly acquired studios with plenty of experience in the genre.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, in order to make any real headway ByteDance will need to challenge the dominance of Tencent &#8212;&nbsp;and that\u2019s no easy feat. Aside from being the biggest player in the Chinese mobile games market, Tencent also has stakes in a number of Western companies including Riot Games, Supercell and Epic Games.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a situation that means, while ByteDance might be able to disrupt the status quo established by Tencent, it\u2019ll struggle (for the time being, at least) to pose a real threat to its Chinese rival.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;[ByteDance\u2019s] massive global user base and investment in gaming could make it a big disruptor in the gaming space this year,&#8221; said Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad, speaking to Bloomberg.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;[However,] while they may be able to develop a number of hit titles in the China market, we believe it will still be difficult for them to truly challenge Tencent.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TikTok owner ByteDance has been quietly building an internal game division so it can break into the lucrative mobile games market.&nbsp; According to Bloomberg, the Chinese internet company has already purchased a number of development studios and exclusive distribution rights, and is preparing to releases its first two titles later this spring.&nbsp; &#8220;People familiar with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":107692,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}