Tencent Reportedly Working on Palworld Clones

gamerant.com:

Rumors are now abound that Chinese gaming giant Tencent is making two new games in the same vein as Palworld, capitalizing on the sleeper hit's genre-mixing popularity. Palworld has sold millions of copies since its release in January 2024, which is why it's not surprising that a developer looking for its next big profitable project would look to it for inspiration.

Tencent Games is the gaming division of the Chinese multinational conglomerate of the same name, which in itself groups together a number of smaller studios that produce its hits. Notable development teams under Tencent Games include Riot Games, LightSpeed Studios, and TiMi Studio Group, which respectively produced League of Legends, Undawn, and Call of Duty: Mobile, to name a few. It's through these properties that the holdings company has made its most money, and now it's banking on Palworld clones being the next big thing.

A new report from Bloomberg revealed that LightSpeed and TiMi are apparently each working on their own Palworld clone, hoping to capture their own spark of popularity for Tencent. It's said that Tencent is looking for the next big gaming hit, especially after its games performance declined by 2% during the 2023 holiday season. The reason for two studios under Tencent working on the same kind of game is to eventually grind out quality output through heated internal competition, as it had managed to achieve success in the form of TiMi's Honor of Kings and LightSpeed's Peacekeeper Elite through this approach.

Tencent's attempt to recapture lightning in a bottle comes in the face of some pretty big challenges it's run into so far in 2024. First, a report released by Reuters back in February 2024 revealed that the company had canceled a Nier mobile game that had been in development for two years. While fans of the game had preferred a new mainline entry on consoles, those who had wanted something new from the franchise may have been disappointed by this news.

Then, another «strategic shift»