Image: Reuters Berita 24 English - According to three persons familiar with the situation, China's Tencent Holdings publicly announced...
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| Image: Reuters |
Berita 24 English - According to three persons familiar with the situation, China's Tencent Holdings publicly announced the launch of a "extended reality" (XR) subsidiary to its employees on Monday, formally putting its bets on the metaverse notion of virtual worlds.
The entity will be overseen by Tencent Games Global's Chief Technology Officer Li Shen and will be part of the company's Interactive Entertainment business area, according to the sources. It will be tasked with growing Tencent's extended reality business, which includes both software and hardware.
According to two of the insiders, the business would eventually employ over 300 people, which is a reasonable estimate given Tencent's recent cost-cutting and hiring freeze. They did warn, though, that the hiring plans are still in flux, as the corporation will change the unit's numbers based on its performance.
The unit was founded earlier this year but remained under wraps, according to the three people. Extended reality refers to immersive technologies like virtual reality and augmented reality, which are thought to be the metaverse's building blocks.
Tencent, China's most valued firm, did not respond to a request for comment.
Since Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, which just changed its name to Meta Platforms Inc, declared that he will commit the future of his firm to developing a metaverse, investors, entrepreneurs, and established tech giants around the world have flocked to the concept of the metaverse.
Companies ranging from Microsoft to Disney have indicated that they are developing their own metaverses, with Chinese and American companies ranging from TikTok owner ByteDance to Apple expanding its XR headset units.
Tencent is best known for its software, like as its game suite and social networking applications, so the XR unit will be a rare venture into hardware for the company.
According to one of the sources, the unit was seen as a passion project of Tencent founder and CEO Pony Ma, who initially underlined the importance of the metaverse, or what he referred to as a "all-real internet," in late 2020.
The launch of the new team contrasts with downsizing at other parts of Tencent, which has been taking cost-cutting measures and scaling back non-core activities, such as the closure of its Penguin Esports unit, in order to deal with the consequences of a regulatory crackdown.
Tencent has kept mainly silent about its metaverse aspirations in public. It told investors in November that it has a lot of "tech and capacity building blocks" to address the metaverse opportunity, but it didn't elaborate.
