Oh Fudge! Tencent buys 20% of Shift Up, the devs behind Stellar Blades
- Thread starter shrike0fth0rns
- Start date
If the game is looking promising I wonder if Sony will invest in them too. It's crazy the reach that Tencent getting though.
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I blame Shawn layden lol he’s working for Tencent now identifying investment and acquisition opportunities. He probably told them hey if u guys don’t grab a stake if this game does well Sony will.
Sony being slow as usual. I expect MS to buy the rest of the 80% 
Damn I forgot about that. The thing is they seem to have an almost unlimited budget too.
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peter42O
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Shift Up is completely unproven at this point. Did people really think that Sony was going to acquire or invest in them? I really don't understand the fascination with this studio.
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Yes, but what we saw until now seems promising and I'm pretty sure that even if the studio is new they must have many people very experienced in big games, very likely on Asian outsourcing teams that work on AAA games. I understand Sony publishing their game and Tencent investing on it.
Being a new studio, as you say are unproved, meaning to invest to get a majority stake must have been very cheap. So if it ends doing a great job then they already are in a good position. If not, it isn't a drama because the investment was very small.
I assume Sony saw a cool game and wanted to support it, as did many times with small 2nd party games and particularly in this case, via their 2nd party XDEV team which before being upgraded to have their own office was part of Japan Studio.
But from here to wanting to buy the studio there is a big distance. They have to first prove they are worth it, because as far as they know they are a now studio and not one with manyu well known super experienced and super successful devs as happened with Haven.
If Sony didn't invest on them maybe it's because they are not interested on them enough, or before that they'd prefer to see results, what is the final quality of their released games. In any case, this investment pretty likely will give them extra resources to grow and improve the quality of the game.
I think this thread wins the award for the hardest thread title to parse due to punctuation for 2022!
Just to make it clear, because the thread title is wrong: Tencent only acquired 20% of Shift Up.
Tencent didn't buy the studio or a majority stake, only invested on it getting a fifth of its shares.
Tencent became the 2nd shareholder of the company, the first one is the studio CEO & founder.
By doing this, Tencent gets a small part of the profits of the studio and could get extra money selling these shares if in the future the studio valuation improves and someone buys it. But other than to decide if they sell or not their stake to a potential future acquirer, they have no influence in the Shift Up big decisions or strategy.
Tencent didn't buy the studio or a majority stake, only invested on it getting a fifth of its shares.
Tencent became the 2nd shareholder of the company, the first one is the studio CEO & founder.
By doing this, Tencent gets a small part of the profits of the studio and could get extra money selling these shares if in the future the studio valuation improves and someone buys it. But other than to decide if they sell or not their stake to a potential future acquirer, they have no influence in the Shift Up big decisions or strategy.
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peter42O
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Stellar Blade is definitely promising and has potential. It's on my list and im looking forward to it as good DMC type game while waiting for DMC 6.
My guess is that Sony invested in them in order to add another exclusive and if they hit a home run, great but if they don't, it's not a big deal.
Yes, the videos have been really promising, but could be only CG or something like that. We have to see how the final game really looks on consoles, and how good its gameplay is.
Because the gameplay from DMC or Bayonetta is not something any random dev can do, they are very polished.
It's a difficult bet, but who knows. They did bet on Genshin Impact that apparently was a Breath of the Wild Chinese anime clone and it has been super successful.
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Sweet! I get to give an hour long Christopher Judge type speech.
Well, Sony wouldn't be publishing the game if they didn't think it was going to be pretty dang good IMO.
At least it's just 20% though; I'm guessing if more shares are opened up and things work out well then Sony may buy shares themselves. The good news is, IIRC, Tencent are trying to distance themselves from affiliation with the CCP (which seems like it might be going through some issues itself WRT leadership). Although this veers into extreme/crazy speculation, I'm wondering if there's a sort of agreed-upon soft alliance going on with Sony & Tencent because they seem to be investing in a lot of the same pubs/devs of late, this is just the latest one.
Although if so I rue to think if/how MS would try to leverage that in some geopolitical sense to try getting the ABK acquisition pushed through. They could just stoop to that point if they feel forced. But they'd have nothing formal to point to, and if it doesn't work it would blow up in their face supremely.
But on the topic of studio investments though, I hope Sony are looking into the DokeV developer. That'd be such a great type of variety for PS5, and just thinking of the potential they, Team Asobi and Pixelopus is getting me insanely hyped.
When it comes to Sony making these types of investments, I trust that they're doing it off seeing some real results, not CG vertical slices and promising pitches. They've shown what pretty much appears to be gameplay already, and with the game due for 2023 I'm guessing we'll see more at a future State of Play or Showcase.
I'm personally pretty confident in Stellar Blade living up to anticipation. And yes, the
helps 
Also @shrike0fth0rns I just looked at Tencent's market cap and yeah, DAMN! That's almost half their 2020 valuation gone, pretty scary valuation losses there.
No wonder they are trying to be more independent from China now (the strict "gaming time" laws enacted there being yet another factor; I can respect the intent so kids aren't losing time studying & stuff, but that's the parent's job to do not government's).
Sony’s investments in companies Tencent has put money into is a safety measure for Japan.Well, Sony wouldn't be publishing the game if they didn't think it was going to be pretty dang good IMO.
At least it's just 20% though; I'm guessing if more shares are opened up and things work out well then Sony may buy shares themselves. The good news is, IIRC, Tencent are trying to distance themselves from affiliation with the CCP (which seems like it might be going through some issues itself WRT leadership). Although this veers into extreme/crazy speculation, I'm wondering if there's a sort of agreed-upon soft alliance going on with Sony & Tencent because they seem to be investing in a lot of the same pubs/devs of late, this is just the latest one.
Although if so I rue to think if/how MS would try to leverage that in some geopolitical sense to try getting the ABK acquisition pushed through. They could just stoop to that point if they feel forced. But they'd have nothing formal to point to, and if it doesn't work it would blow up in their face supremely.
But on the topic of studio investments though, I hope Sony are looking into the DokeV developer. That'd be such a great type of variety for PS5, and just thinking of the potential they, Team Asobi and Pixelopus is getting me insanely hyped.
When it comes to Sony making these types of investments, I trust that they're doing it off seeing some real results, not CG vertical slices and promising pitches. They've shown what pretty much appears to be gameplay already, and with the game due for 2023 I'm guessing we'll see more at a future State of Play or Showcase.
I'm personally pretty confident in Stellar Blade living up to anticipation. And yes, the
Also @shrike0fth0rns I just looked at Tencent's market cap and yeah, DAMN! That's almost half their 2020 valuation gone, pretty scary valuation losses there.
No wonder they are trying to be more independent from China now (the strict "gaming time" laws enacted there being yet another factor; I can respect the intent so kids aren't losing time studying & stuff, but that's the parent's job to do not government's).
Due to Japanese law, there is a limit to foreign ownership of companies in key industries, including finance, tech and security. Sony is in both finance and tech, so Sony buying even 1% of a company Tencent has bought a stake in freezes Tencent out of buying any more stock, as they are no longer allowed to take a controlling interest in the company, making buying more stock than they have pointless for their investment model.
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Why do ppl keep saying that? There isn’t a specific cap on forgone investment. The Saudi investment fund bought snk with no trouble. Any instituting can make itself open to forgiven investment unless it has some strategic sensitive significances. Netease and Tencent has stakes in Japanese devs. Sega has like nearly 29% of its stock forgone own and they took like 200mil from netease a few yrs ago. Tencent has 16% of from and almost the same in Kodakawa. Saudi investment fund has stakes in Nintendo and capcom. Ppl are always referencing laws and limits with out being specific.