Tencent Unveils Big-Budget Open-World Game

Tencent revealed one of its most ambitious attempts at a big-budget console game on Friday, betting on a new franchise to fire up fans and help the global expansion of China's most valuable company. From a report: Last Sentinel is an open-world adventure game set in a dystopian future Tokyo, developed by Tencent's California-based Lightspeed LA studio. The 200-member creative team is headed up by Steve Martin, a quarter-century veteran of the games industry who has worked on marquee games in the genre like Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption.

The new title, four years in development, is testament to Tencent's long-term pursuit of foreign gaming assets and talent. The WeChat operator still relies heavily on domestic game sales in China, but in recent years it's amped up efforts to acquire slices of up-and-coming studios from Europe to Japan to complement its ownership of League of Legends creator Riot Games and large stake in Epic Games. Last Sentinel is part of its push to create new intellectual property from scratch. 'We have a global gaming community that's screaming out that it wants something new. It wants new IPs, it wants new characters. We get to provide that,' Martin, who left Rockstar Games to join Tencent in 2019, said in a video interview before unwrapping his work at The Game Awards in Los Angeles.

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