In the long list of potential future masters of the modern world, the giant Tencent is undoubtedly at the top. Accustomed to massive investments in the video game sector, the Chinese company is now targeting the ex-rarities of Playtonic who want to benefit from it.
Founded in 2014 by a few fine flowers from the rarities of the great era (i.e. the one before the takeover by Microsoft), the Playtonic Studio continues to grow: a few months after the unveiling of their Playtonic Friends label (which will have made it above all possible) to post a little golf trip really tested by you) the British will be able to blow the walls and multiply the projects.
Multiplication factor
Nothing seemed to predict Tencent’s interest in the ancestors of the Yooka Laylee series, and director Gavin Price shares his surprise with our colleagues at Games industry :
I was surprised because I didn’t expect them to be interested in Playtonic. It turned out they had a division for the 3D platform. So we had to formalize our plans for the future. They liked the studio and what we could do before and they thought they could help us achieve new goals.
Thanks to this new investor, Playtonic wants to increase its workforce and open new studios: According to Price, the number of employees is to be increased gradually from 40 to 90 within two years, in order to finally form three different development teams.
Yooka is still tying her
But that’s not all, because Playtonic took advantage of this spotlight to announce that a new episode of Yooka-Laylee is in the pipeline. After paying tribute to Banjo-Kazooie and then Donkey Kong Country in the first two episodes, what direction will the next work go? Secret and fur ball.
While waiting to find out, Gavin Price wants to calm the rest of the operations down:
We have had this start-up mentality for six years. We probably should have got off earlier than we did. Now we can benefit from better HR services and teams JUrid operational teams … We always wanted to return to the 3D platform: it will be one of the key genres that we want to stay active in, but not limited to. The idea is not that all of our studios are working on the same type of game.
Playtonic will have a lot of work to do as the British have already announced that they will be releasing Lil Gator Game, Blossom Tales 2: The Minotaur Prince and Victory Heat Rally in 2022.
