Tencent and Square Enix Announce Strategic Alliance to Develop Games Together

Square Enix announced today that they signed a letter of intent to forge a strategic alliance with Chinese gaming juggernaut Tencent. While there aren't too many details about the deal just yet, but the official announcement suggests creating a joint venture to develop new 'Triple-A' titles based on new and existing IP.

"The alliance will enable us to couple our broad range of internet service capabilities to Square Enix Group's superb creativity, and provide our customers with unprecedented content experiences on a global basis," Steven Ma, Senior Vice President for the Tencent Group said.

While there hasn't been any grand plans yet, I suspect this deal is mostly about bringing Square Enix titles to China - more specifically - Tencent wants to make games based on the Final Fantasy franchise. This isn't Tencent's first time making 'strategic alliances' with gaming companies to bring their games to China. They recently developed a Mu mobile game in China in partnership with Webzen and a TLBB game in partnership with ChangYou. They're also the ones that made the mobile version of Blue Hole's Playerunknown's Battlegrounds.

Tencent owns and operates the biggest app store in China and also develops the most successful games there, so a Tencent developed and promoted Final Fantasy mobile game will bring in the big bucks for both companies.