Tencent is enjoying plenty of success as China’s freeze on the approval of new games for release in the region comes to a close. The company released ten mobile games in the second quarter of 2019 alone, as compared to just one in the whole of last year, though one particular success story among those ten games stands out. Peacekeeper Elite, a Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds clone engineered to promote peace in China, has reached an incredibly impressive 50 million daily active users (DAUs).
To put that figure into perspective, if every single person in both Texas and Florida—the second and third-biggest U.S. states, respectively—played the game on a daily basis (judging by figures from September 2018), the numbers would still come up just short. What might illustrate the popularity of Peacekeeper Elite even more so is the fact that the game on which it’s based, PUBG Mobile, draws the same 50 million DAUs figure internationally. PUBG Mobile is not an unpopular game.
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Mobile gaming accounts for a large portion of Tencent’s revenue, helping to lift online game earnings for the company by 8% year-on-year to ¥27.3 billion, or $3.9 billion. The mobile division specifically was up 26% over last year, showing the buying power of the previously untapped Chinese gaming audience. Honor of Kings was another Q2 mobile hit, but we’re now into Q3 and Tencent doesn’t appear to be slowing down, having already launched KartRider Rush, Game of Thrones: Winter is Coming, and Dragon Raja.
Sales figures for those three games will follow in Tencent’s Q3 financial report, but having ranked well on the China iOS charts, the forecast seems optimistic. Less so for the PC side of the company’s gaming business, however, which saw its revenue fall 11% year-on-year to ¥11.7 billion ($1.7 billion). Considering that Tencent owns the immensely popular Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) League of Legends, those figures may point towards a more mobile-focused future for the company.
