The latest financial results from Chinese entertainment giant Tencent give us a look into how the firm’s games business is performing.
PC games such as League of Legends from Riot, which it owns, and Nexon's Dungeon and Fighter, a title it distributes, brought in ¥13.6bn ($2.03bn) for the firm, a rise of 29 per cent year-over-year.
Though average spend per user did ‘generally’ increase, Tencent does warn that revenue from PC titles is going to decelerate in the future.
Overall, Tencent’s Value Added Services division, the umbrella for mobile, PC and online, as well as ad and social media servies – brought in ¥39.8bn ($5.4bn), a 43 per cent increase year-on-year.
For the first time, PC wasn’t the biggest source of revenue, with mobile eclipsing it thanks to the launch of titles such as Honor of Kings.
“During the second quarter of 2017, we delivered strong revenue growth from multiple businesses, which enabled us to reinvest in innovations and new technologies in an increasingly competitive industry. While our games business continued to grow, we have stepped up our effort to ensure users play games in a healthy manner,” Tencent chairman and CEO Mr. Ma Huateng said.
“Successful licensed drama serials and self-commissioned variety shows boosted user engagement and advertising revenue for our video platform. Our payment business continued to make everyday life easier for Internet users, with increased adoption of Weixin Payment for offline transactions. We have also been increasing our investment in cloud services and AI technologies, which will enable us to serve our users and business partners even better into the future.”
This news follows Tencent upping its position in games, investing in Elite Dangerous firm Frontier as well as Liverpool-based indie Milky Tea. There were also rumours circulating the firm was eying up Playerunknown's Battlegrounds maker Bluehole, but these were have been confirmed as false.