Tencent reveals most ambitious game yet for consoles amid global expansion

By Josh Ye

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings unveiled on Friday a big-budget console game named Last Sentinel, a title seen as the mobile gaming giant's most ambitious foray into the console market.

The Shenzhen-based firm showed a trailer of the action role-playing game at The Game Awards in Los Angeles. The title is being developed by about 200 people at Tencent's Lightspeed LA game studio, a key U.S. studio at the heart of Tencent's global expansion plans.

Tencent has not revealed a launch date for Last Sentinel, which will let players fight robots in a dystopian Japan.

In 2020, Tencent brought in Steve Martin, a well-known industry veteran who has worked on some of the world's most successful console games such as Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, to help bolster its presence in console games.

Tencent has been mostly known for developing popular mobile games such as PUBG Mobile, and Chinese players have traditionally spent more on mobile games, which are typically cheaper to produce.

But as Tencent looks to expand abroad as well as cater to Chinese consumers' changing tastes at home, it is pouring resources into big-budget console games.

While Last Sentinel will showcase Tencent's in-house development prowess, the company has scooped up big stakes in many of the world's leading game developers, including a 30% stake in Baldur’s Gate 3 maker Larian Studios.

(Reporting by Josh Ye; Editing by Gerry Doyle)