Sony Group Wants to Expand China-Made Game Incubation to Compete with Microsoft

Sony wants to expand the game market in China. (photo: dock. Pixabay)

JAKARTA - Sony Group Corp announced on Tuesday, November 22 that it plans to expand a program to identify and incubate games made in China. This was done in a race with Microsoft Corp to enter the Chinese game market, which is large and growing.

"This program will invest more than 1 million yuan (IDR 2.1 billion) in each game registered, and will fund not only small teams but also large teams with dozens of engineers or more," said Bao Bo, Sony's production director on games in China, as quoted by Reuters.

The Japanese tech giant's plans were publicized during an event broadcast live from the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu to relaunch its China Hero Project program, which was halted due to COVID-19.

"The scale of season three will far exceed the previous two," said Bao. He also added that Sony will publish some of the games and PlayStation Studios will support the submitted projects.

Sony said it would be the publisher of Lost Soul Aside and Convallaria, the two games listed in the previous two seasons.

Hero Project China has launched its first two batches of games in 2017 and 2019 and has supported 17 titles, seven of which have hit the market.

It was part of Sony's years-long approach to China, which ultimately led to a lucrative exclusivity deal with its Chinese hit "Genshin Impact" outside of the China Hero Project. Before its launch in 2019, this game was the most profitable game in the world.

Reuters reported last month that Sony's success with "Genshin Impact" had prompted Microsoft to aggressively court Chinese game developers with hefty licensing deals.

Sony sells PlayStation (PS) consoles in China, where people have traditionally preferred to play mobile-based games.

They have sold more than 3.5 million PS4 consoles in China and Jim Ryan, CEO of its gaming-focused subsidiary Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), said it has sold around 670.000 PS5 units there since its launch in China in May 2021.

Tatsuo Eguchi, president of SIE Shanghai, said that Sony's goal is to sell twice as many PS5 consoles as PS4 and believes China Hero Project can help achieve this goal.

"We want gamers around the world to better understand the creativity that comes from China. I have always dreamed that console games would become a regular part of the daily entertainment for Chinese people," he said.