Tencent Is Reportedly Hiring Switch Port Specialists

It's certainly interesting but there's not enough info to know what they're planning just yet.

Didn't they also make Call of Duty Mobile?

There's quite a few good Switch port specialists in Hong Kong.

Maybe they are making a game where you murder Hong Kong protesters?

Oh please, Nintendo. Don't sell your souls to demagogues, just to fail (again) in a market that apparently doesn't buy dedicated game systems.

Oh bother.

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cool, don’t care. they’re the reason blizzard is acting a fool atm. i will never touch anything made by them. not to mention privacy, tencent is a chinese company. they really couldn’t care less about their own citizens privacy, much less citizens of other countries. if people care about the gaming industry they’ll follow and stop tencent before it’s too late and they own a majority of the gaming companies

@tekknik I'm pretty sure they already own a good chunk of the industry. From Activision to Ubisoft. They have stakes in Nintendo as well. It's inevitable, unfortunately.

why only 1 person, hire a bunch, i want switch in chain asap

@sixrings I do believe so

@sixrings yea

@Gauchorino Demagogues? You mean the United States?

Chinese company? Better get my witty comments about freedom, silence, protesters, and souls ready. Oh, and a dash of self-righteous high-roading while I use a product with Chinese-manufactured components. Okay, I'm all set now!

Anyway. I wonder if this would be planning for just introducing titles in the Chinese market, or porting things to the system as a whole.

@Skulks A rock band from the '60s are hardly demagogues.

Bring COD: Mobile and watch the money pile in!

I don't blame Nintendo for wanting to get in on the huge market potential of China.

But they'd be fools not to be EXTREMELY careful with it. Look at how Blizzard was whipped by the Chinese government and forced to toe the line.

Blizzard would be devastated to lose access to that market, but Nintendo isn't yet tangled in it. I'd prefer they not take the risk, but I'm sure share holders and corporate types are all pushing for it.

@Heavyarms55

I remember the meltdown from the president of Nintendo of Russia united gamers and Nintendo fans together because at the end of the day, we all want to have fun.

I can’t stand China or Tencent myself, but who knows? Maybe i am being optimistic, even if historically, liberalization of trade with China ended up leading to most American companies being too afraid to harm their market access with politically sensitive issues that encourages human rights violations. Maybe gaming is a, no pun intended, potential game changer, but I guess all I can hope for is that Nintendo doesn’t do something as stupid as blizzard and focuses on keeping us together, even if the NBA kinda didn’t.

@Savino
I think he might have meant, that there is no such thing as 'just' selling your product(s) in China.
It always comes at a cost, at the very least you have to partner up with a party approved regional partner and share some otherwise privileged business information as well as tacitly agree to curtail your own relationships and/or standing in terms of what the party considers sensitive issues (you know like Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the South China sea etc.).

labelling that as "selling one's soul" ... well, I think that is fair, if a bit colorful. It might be too harsh, for sure, but on the other hand, you are not "just" doing business either. After all, the last two decades have made it clear to everyone that there China is not just another market (if anyone hadn't caught on yet, the last couple of months really made it abundantely clear).

I'm not saying 'don't do it', but I am saying don't pretend it's business as normal. It's not and it's probably never going to be.

@tekknik i agree till blizzard/activsion stops bending over for china their not getting a single cent from me

@Savino While I realize China is a huge market and Nintendo should definitely sell their products there, I still don't like Tencent, not because of privacy, but because I don't like anything that silences people for speaking out for human rights.

@HobbitGamer Glad to know your desperate need for electronic entertainment overrides important issues dangerously affecting people around the world.

This turned out pretty political. China isn't the only government that violates human rights and freedom of speech in different ways. US is spying in all of us according to former CIA agent Edward Snowden, without our consent. Does it make it alright cause its a western democracy? Anyway i think this is one of the good chinese companies (in terms of technical skills, dunno about their political agenda or anything)

@Brady1138 Not at all what I said, nor the satirical point.

Don’t they also handle development for COD mobile?

*Tencent Social Credit System App will be preinstalled on all Nintendo Switches in China

hire Panic Button they are the gods of porting games to Switch

@MasterJay Don't the Japanese absolutely despise the Chinese anyways? No way would Nintendo bend over backwards like Blizzard did.

@Savino Do a sizable amount of Chinese citizens buy dedicated consoles, though? Perhaps they do. I was under the impression that they didn't, but I might be misinformed about this. I thought the iQue systems were all basically failures (even the GBA and 3DS iQue), as well as the Xbox One despite being sold from Shanghai, but I haven't looked into that in a long time. Additionally, from anecdotal experience, most of the PRC nationals I have known either didn't like games when I asked them about them or seemed to be PC gamers.

Regardless, though you would normally be making an obviously good point, if the Switch doesn't end up selling in the PRC, that's definitely not where the money is, even with a huge population.

@Santoria There's something called the "Yakuza" (ie, they have done a lot of subversive things against the Japanese government). Also, the relationship between Japan and China is more complicated than that, thanks to business dealings (including countless products being made from Chinese slave labour, including Japanese products).

@Skulks You're disproving your own claim by saying that about your own country without receiving any sort of punitive repercussion from them for doing so. Good luck living in China (or in Hong Kong) and doing that.

@Severian Your optimism is refreshing at the very least. I'd like to believe good will come from this.

@Heavyarms55

These days, a little more optimism is sorely needed.

Actually, since the NES, there has always been something about Nintendo that has made me follow it religiously because it brought so much joy without some of the craziness I'd see in the heated rivalry with Sega, then Sony.

There's just something about the unique worlds of Nintendo, whether it was Kirby's Adventure or Donkey Kong Country 3, Super Mario RPG or EarthBound, life could be tough personally and globally, and I and my friends would always have a place to go and inspire.

Some people do get really into it, if we see Chinese Zelda fans giving the finger en masse recently and smashing a PS4...but it goes to show there's something special about Nintendo that makes us believers, and maybe that can do some good later down the line.

Ha, last night I read this as 50cent, and thought "oh god really?", ok it makes more sense this morning

@Gauchorino Just a joke! Not here for a political discussion, professor!

@Savino Interesting. Thanks for the info.