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THREAD: PUBG Mobile’s team opened an 3A studio in LA. It comes after Tencent’s TiMi Studios, which created COD Mobile, Honor of Kings and Pokémon Unite, started its own 3A studio in LA. $TCEHY encourages internal competition. TiMi seems bigger atm. https://bit.ly/2D1AjMM
Both teams recruited reputable AAA veterans from Rockstar, Ubisoft and other big players. I wrote about Tencent's hire of Scott Warner and Ken-Ichiro Imaizumi before. It will be interesting to see where Ken lands. https://bit.ly/2VEPD8r
TiMi is still the more famous of the two since it created Honor of Kings, or Arena of Valor outside China, all those years ago. But LightSpeed made a huge splash with PUBG Mobile. PUBG Mobile tops the grossing chart with US$226 million in May alone. https://bit.ly/38j12jq
LightSpeed also seems more ready to take on AAA titles as the biggest title featured by Tencent's game conference this year is an upcoming AAA game by LightSpeed called Project SYN. TiMi hasn't shown any AAA title yet. @ZhugeEX has a great thread on this. https://twitter.com/ZhugeEX/status/1277749439806013443
LightSpeed stole the thunder from TiMi with PUBG Mobile. In fact, Tencent commissioned by TiMi and LightSpeed to create two versions of PUBG Mobile. LightSpeed's Exhilarating Battlefield became more popular. Tencent shelved TiMi's Army Attack soon after. https://bit.ly/2ZtclBt
But TiMi still seems much bigger with more well-known IPs. Call of Duty Mobile, Pokémon UNITE and the upcoming Metal Slug game all attest to TiMi's war chest of resources. Recruitment ad also seems that TiMi may be hiring more people than LightSpeed atm. https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/3091013/tencent-create-mobile-versions-famous-japanese-games-such-street-fighter-metal
