Honour of Kings, Tencent’s flagship videogame, announced a record 100 million daily active users worldwide and said it was expanding into other genres and forming a tie-up with British luxury group Burberry.
The moves come as the world’s most lucrative mobile game celebrates its fifth anniversary and faces a challenge from a mobile version of League of Legends, the world’s most popular desktop game.
League of Legends: Wild Rift, made by Tencent’s subsidiary, US studio Riot Games, is currently being tested in Asia.
“We are going to expand how players can interact with the Honour of Kings world and create a multi-dimensional brand experience that drives engagement both inside the game and outside it. This could include anime, films, music and even live-action series,” Li Min, game director and GM of Tencent’s Timi Studios, said in an interview.
Tencent said it would launch two new untitled derivative games, expanding the Honour of Kings world from multiplayer online battle arena into two more unspecified genres.
Battle arenas
Honour of Kings, a multiplayer role-playing game, allows players hack their way through battle arenas. Timi Studios said on Sunday it had also introduced an officially licensed Bruce Lee look to the game.
Honour of Kings is the most successful game Tencent has ever made. Tencent, China’s biggest videogames and social media company, also saw the game as a perfect conduit to develop the now highly popular e-sports in China, as more and more young and affluent Chinese are willing to spend money on videogames.
With close to US$240-million in user spending, not including third-party Android stores, Honour of Kings was the top-grossing mobile game worldwide for September 2020, according to Sensor Tower. This represented 87% growth from September 2019. — Reported by Pei Li, (c) 2020 Reuters
