Chinese Media Giant Tencent Forms Nintendo Partnership Department

Technode recently reported that Chinese mega-corp Tencent is developing a new department solely for the purpose of creating a partnership with Nintendo for Switch distribution.

The news comes a short while after the beginnings of a partnership between Nintendo and Tencent was announced. At the time, Nintendo of Japan President Shuntaro Furukawa said while the partnership would be important for the future, it was still an uncertain venture and didn’t factor into Nintendo’s short-term fiscal strategy.

Despite Furukawa’s cautious approach, Nintendo’s shares and those of companies that develop for it rose a fair bit after the announcement.

Now, it seems Nintendo’s break-in to the Chinese console market might be getting more certain after all. The Technode briefing says Tencent posted two job openings on July 1, advertising positions for its “Nintendo cooperation department” in Shenzhen, which is where Tencent is located.

The first position is for a business analyst handling insights and other related tasks, and the other is for a front-end web developer, likely in preparation for a Tencent-backed Nintendo website in the China region.

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These positions come hot on the heels of two previous openings posted in June, advertising for community operations professionals for the Switch’s Chinese launch.

The April report from Bloomberg we reported on didn’t mention an anticipated timeframe for the Switch’s launch in the region, though if the company is already preparing for launch and possibly building a website, it might be sooner rather than later.

Still, how successful the Switch will be once it does release in China remains uncertain. Piracy is rampant in the Chinese games industry, partly in response to the often strict government regulations determining what’s acceptable for distribution.

Yet Tencent is responsible for a significant amount of (legal) Chinese games distribution, and with the Nintendo x Tencent partnership seemingly in full swing, it’s always possible Nintendo might be the first major non-Chinese video game software company to crack open the market.