Tencent eyes Southeast Asia for cloud gaming platform

Tencent’s cloud gaming could go on TV boxes, beating Google Stadia and Microsoft’s xCloud to Asia

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Tencent’s hands-on demo at ChinaJoy allowed people to experience cloud gaming via Tencent Cloud. (Picture: Tencent Cloud)

Published: 12:40am, 7 Aug 2019Updated: 9:10am, 20 Sep 2019

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

Tencent may be China’s biggest gaming company, but it’s not planning to launch its cloud gaming service in China just yet. Instead, the Chinese gaming giant is eyeing Southeast Asia.

Tencent Cloud unveiled its cloud gaming platform at this year’s ChinaJoy, China’s largest gaming convention, where attendees got to try streaming games themselves.

By looking abroad, Tencent is acknowledging the challenges of the gaming market at home. The company suggested that Southeast Asia is a better testing ground than China because of China’s strict regulations on media content.

Tencent might also not face as much competition in the region’s emerging markets. Google and Microsoft are primarily targeting Western markets at first with their own cloud gaming platforms. While Tencent’s service is currently a business-to-business cloud gaming solution, the company’s tech could wind up on hardware that competes with other services.

“We’re looking at partnering with some Chinese set-top box operators,” Li Guolong, product manager of Tencent’s cloud gaming service, told Abacus. “Then we can together promote some AAA games [in Southeast Asia]. This is one of the directions we are talking about with our clients.”

Google’s Stadia service, which is also going to launch on streaming devices like its own Chromecast Ultra, is only set to launch in the US, Canada and Europe. Microsoft hasn’t announced launch markets for Project xCloud, but it says it’s sent xCloud hardware to Azure data centers in North America, Europe and Asia. But the company only has one data center serving Southeast Asia.