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Nintendo has revealed a portion of its Nintendo Switch launch strategy for China. The Kyoto company will team up with Tencent to launch the Switch in the country. It sounds as though there have clearly been some hurdles to overcome and the companies haven’t announced pricing or the all important launch date, yet. Here’s a summary of what was said via Reset Era member Phantom Thief:
- Tencent is launching the Switch in China
- Tencent will be localizing Switch games into simplified Chinese; Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey have been confirmed
- Tencent will be hosting the platform’s online services in China (Google hosts them in the rest of the world, but Google is blocked in China)
- The eShop will accept payments over WeChat Pay in China (WeChat being Tencent’s platform)
- Costs and release date have not yet been announced
Why isn’t Nintendo hosting their own services? A warning that the Switch is hosted by Google would’ve been nice before I bought one.
Because hosting services on an international scale isn’t something you just do, you need someone with actual experience doing it. It’s presumably also cheaper to go with an established network instead of building your own.
Makes sense since Google has a multitude of Data Centers and Tencent is the biggest gaming company in the world, with the largest social network in China.
Good Business