On June 30, the "Social Metaverse" Soul submitted an IPO application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, becoming the first share of the Social Metaverse.
According to the prospectus, Image Architecture Investment (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd. is the largest institutional shareholder, holding 49.9% of the shares and 25.7% of the company’s voting rights. The only shareholder of Image Architecture Investment (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd. is Tencent Holdings.
And Tencent is not only a shareholder relationship for Soul, but also acts as a related party supplier relationship. From 2019 to 2021, Soul paid advertising fees of 4.7 million, 52.2 million and 78.8 million yuan to Tencent.
And according to Soul’s expectations, the estimated advertising service costs paid to Tencent from 2022 to 2024 are 100 million yuan, 120 million yuan, and 140 million yuan.
I have to say that once Soul’s IPO in Hong Kong is completed, Tencent will become the biggest beneficiary of this “first stock in the social metaverse”.
Recently, Mr. Xili sorted out Tencent’s investments in recent years. In the field of “Metaverse”, or what Ma Huateng calls the field of “Quan Zhen Internet”, Tencent has really got a hold on it through internal and external layouts. He plays his cards well, his tone is not as high as Zuckerberg's, but his actions are not slow at all, and he is very ambitious!
Ten years ago, Tencent had "unintentionally inserted it"
On March 10, 2021, "the first stock of the Metaverse" Roblox was directly listed, pushing the Metaverse that had been "hidden in the ice" for decades to the capital market.
Roblox is considered to be the world's largest multiplayer online creative sandbox game platform, and the only platform that allows a global community of more than 100 million monthly users to imagine and create together, and Tencent has had business communication with it as early as 2019 , and participated in Roblox’s G-round cooperative financing in February 2020, which was valued at US$4 billion at the time, and was the exclusive agent for Roblox product distribution in China. Today, Roblox is valued at over $20 billion.
Another star company is Epic Games, the developer of the "Fortnite" game. In July 2012, Tencent acquired 48.4% of the company's shares for US$330 million. Last year, the company raised US$1 billion; when it raised US$2 billion in April this year, Epic Games' equity was valued at US$31.5 billion, and Tencent's shareholding ratio was still about 40%.
Epic Games has made a lot of moves in the Metaverse in the past two years. CEO and founder Tim Sweeney has said bluntly that he wants to accelerate the work of building the Metaverse and create a space where players can have fun with their friends.
It can be said that Tencent has in-depth connections with these two popular fried chicken companies related to the Metaverse globally, whether it is in-depth business cooperation or a large proportion of equity shares.
may have been created unintentionally, but the synergy of thinking behind it is the core. In fact, neither Roblox nor Epic Games are young companies. Roblox was established in 2004, and Epic Games was established earlier in 1991. These companies have evolved along the way, including player communities, immersive experiences, 3D virtualization, etc. In fact, they are all closely related to Ma Huateng. The so-called "Quanzhen Internet" is consistent.
Subconsciously, Tencent is very "meta-universe".
Globally, search for Yuanverse’s investment targets
If there had not been changes in the Internet industry in the past two years, perhaps companies such as Tencent could still be immersed in the mobile Internet era.
But starting in 2020, whether it is policies from extensive to refined, users from incremental to existing, or business from consumer Internet to industrial Internet, the Internet industry has basically reached a consensus: one era has passed, and we must turn to the next era. .
's "turning the page" feeling seems to be just like the wave of PCs switching to mobile Internet ten years ago. Although "little lotus has just revealed its sharp edges", the new wave is already brewing. , sensitive entrepreneurs can feel the subtle changes.
In terms of investment, we have seen significant changes in Tencent: increasing investment overseas, increasing investment in 2B-end enterprises, and increasing investment in domestic and foreign enterprises related to the "Yuanverse".
In China, Sharp Jun sorted it out. Since December 2020, Tencent has invested in at least 8 companies, involving AR, VR, virtual video live broadcast, 3D expression animation, etc.Most of these invested companies have a shareholding ratio of more than 12%, and some even exceed 40%.
For example, in December 2020, Tencent invested in Shanghai Titanium Core Network Technology Co., Ltd. , with a shareholding ratio of nearly 40%. This is a VR game developer. The first game it developed is "Wonderland Guardian". The action tower defense game has been launched on multiple platforms. In April 2021, Tencent invested in Lancet Studio , holding a 44% shareholding ratio.
According to the information, this company is committed to developing high-quality console and VR games for the Chinese and world markets. The project it is working on is a space-themed first-person shooter game called "Project Boundary". The entire work Trying to depict a near-future space tactical environment with a strong sense of reality.
Overseas, Sharp Jun statistics show that since November 2021, Tencent has invested in at least 7 companies related to the "Yuanverse", located in South Korea, Australia, the United Kingdom, etc.
Among these investments, Tencent made a public investment in the field of NFT for the first time. In March this year, it invested in Immutable, an Australian NFT (non-fungible token) startup. In May this year, Tencent invested in South Korea's HAEGIN, which developed the "Yuanverse Playground" mobile game "Play Together".
In November last year, Tencent invested in gesture recognition company Ultraleap in the UK. At that time, other capital parties participating with Tencent jointly invested 60 million euros.
Ultraleap said the financing will be used to develop the best two-hand interaction method and help gestures become the main interactive interface of the Metaverse (metaverse) platform.
Also in November last year, Tencent participated in a US$26 million round of financing for the Australian game UGC platform Mod.io. This company's platform can help amateur players create content using popular codes. It not only supports cross-platform, but also provides game developers with Build a community of creators.
Next, it can be expected that as the concept of the "metaverse" gradually becomes clearer and more specific internally, related investments will also be cautiously expanded. Yuanverse industry chain companies around the world will be the targets of Tencent’s strategic investment.
In the end, I have to play with the metaverse myself
Ma Huateng’s article in the preface of Tencent Group annual special issue "Three Views" at the end of 2020 can be called a classic. Ma Huateng said:
Now, an exciting opportunity is coming. After ten years of development, the mobile Internet is about to usher in the next wave of upgrades, which we call the Quanzhen Internet. A series of basic technologies from real-time communication to audio and video are already in place, and computing power is rapidly improving, promoting richer changes in information contact and human-computer interaction models.
This is a process from quantitative change to qualitative change, which means the integration of online and offline, the integration of physical and electronic means. The door to the virtual world and the real world has been opened. Whether it is from virtual to real or from real to virtual, we are committed to helping users achieve a more realistic experience. From the consumer Internet to the industrial Internet, application scenarios have also been opened. Communication and social networking are becoming video-based, video conferencing and live broadcasting are on the rise, and games are also becoming cloud-based. With the promotion of new technologies, new hardware and software such as VR in various scenarios, I believe that another major reshuffle is about to begin. Just like the transformation of the mobile Internet, those who cannot get on board will gradually fall behind.
Ma Huateng said: "There are some key opportunities in the growth of enterprises. If you cross them, you can fly farther. If you fail to cross them, you will fall behind or even fall." The direction represented by the Metaverse is probably the key opportunity in Ma Huateng's eyes.
Entering 2022, Tencent finally announced the formal establishment of the “Extended Reality” (XR) department in June. It is said that within Tencent, this project is regarded as a "passion project" by Ma Huateng.
To a certain extent, this means that Tencent has truly "ended up" personally and bet on the "Metaverse".
Judging from the ownership of the "Extended Reality" (XR) department, it will be led by Tencent Games Global CTO (Chief Technology Officer) Li Shen and will become part of Tencent Interactive Entertainment Business Group (IEG) . Therefore, the "Extended Reality" (XR) department is currently more focused on the gaming field. It is also the most natural to use games as an entry point to enter the Metaverse.
Shen Li, head of the "Extended Reality" (XR) department, said about the Metaverse His understanding has become more and more profound in recent years. He had been paying attention to VR as early as 2015. In August 2016, Shen Li, then general manager of Tencent NExT Studios, once shared the criteria for a good game: "It has passed. It will also leave you with fragments of memories many years from now, and you won't regret the time you spent playing this game. "In September of that year, at the VR sub-forum of Tencent's Global Partner Conference, Shen Li shared that the VR industry has slowly begun to shift from 1 to N, or to infinity. But just a breakthrough from 0 to 1, from 1 to 1 NWe will still face many, many problems, especially in the early stages of the industry.
NExT Studios, which Shen Li is responsible for, has also been continuing to study cutting-edge technologies such as high-fidelity digital humans and AI, and has photographic modeling, motion capture . The two major laboratories have built the industry's high-end digital human production pipeline and animation production pipeline based on optical motion capture. The digital astronaut "Xiao Zheng" and the virtual idol group "WL.S" are all digital humans under its subsidiaries. Representative project.
In May 2021, Shen Li accepted an exclusive interview in which he mentioned the creation of "super digital scenes" and mentioned several cases that shocked the industry:
"Fortnite" held a famous American Rap singer Travis Scott's concert was watched by more than 17 million players at the same time, which completely broke through the traditional game experience;
"Roblox" encourages users to create new content in it. Currently, there are more than 18 million players in the community. Works;
"Assassin's Creed" has made great breakthroughs in the simulation and authenticity of the world, making players feel like they have really returned to history and have a deeper and more direct understanding.
In Shen Li's view, the new game is new. The application of technology makes the game content itself more immersive, allowing players to immerse themselves in it and believe that this is a real world. From the perspective of content creation, massive amounts of content can be created more conveniently and efficiently, which further enhances the content. Richness. At the same time, technology has brought about changes in interactive forms and experience scenarios, such as the evolution of AR, VR, and mobile phone touch screen control, giving rise to new control modes based on natural interaction—VR is a typical case of “natural interaction” , players can interact in a more natural way through their own jumping, dodging, etc.
In Shen Li’s imagination, any scene that requires real people in the future can be presented with a virtual person: “There are many virtual people that real people do not have. For example, TA can exist in any environment and have countless clones. If you want to hold a concert, TA can appear in Shanghai and Tokyo at the same time, but virtual singers need to be scheduled. Quickly change different outfits, hairstyles, and makeup, so there is a lot of room for imagination. NExT has also been exploring virtual human implementation scenarios and making various attempts. "In Shen Li's opinion,
is a more efficient and realistic one. The digital world is slowly being built. The games of the future will be: virtual and reality are merging; the boundaries of platforms and the terminal experience of large and small screens are also merging, online and offline, in-game and outside of the game are merging, and officially created content and player-created content are also merging. In fusion.
Therefore, in Tencent’s metaverse layout, games must be the biggest protagonist. Moreover, Tencent is also constantly expanding its boundaries in its understanding of games. Games can also connect to more offline scenes and can completely create "super digital scenes." What about
besides games?
Tencent has entered the digital collection market. In August 2021, Tencent's NFT trading platform " magic core " was officially launched. This is also its first attempt at self-developed NFT products.On March 11, 2022, Tencent Magic Core officially connected to the national copyright transaction protection alliance chain and became a member of the national digital cultural creation normative governance ecological matrix.
In May of this year, Wang Shimu, the former general manager of Tencent News, resigned and was transferred to the PCG social platform and application line, responsible for the innovative businesses such as Magic Core that he led the team to incubate.
In fact, regarding the layout of the Metaverse, at the financial report analysis meeting in the third quarter of last year, Tencent executives revealed a lot of information in response to analysts' questions, including:
The proposal of the Metaverse is very beneficial to the game industry; at the same time , Metaverse also has a very good application space in social media. In the future, Metaverse may also be applied to enterprise service-related scenarios.
To realize the metaverse, Tencent has different paths. For example, it can develop highly interactive and open-world games. It can also develop different categories of games under the same IP. It can also provide players with complete infrastructure to develop through a game platform. Self-built experiences introduce more gamification factors to social networks; they can also provide a more realistic physical world experience through AR and VR.
Based on its gaming and social media foundation, Tencent will use a large number of technologies and capabilities to explore and develop the metaverse like building blocks.
Tencent’s capabilities and positioning in the Metaverse. Tencent has technology and know-how building blocks. Through these modules, it can well support the Metaverse. For example, Tencent has experience in games and social media, and has expertise in engines, AI, etc. advantages, and Tencent’s server architecture can also connect more users. At , we believe that we can ultimately realize the metaverse by building a more complete ecosystem.
Any analysts want Tencent to share the opportunities it sees in the Metaverse in a global context? What needs to be prepared to seize this development trend? Do you need to prepare a separate global infrastructure or some social network infrastructure to seize this opportunity in a global context? In this regard, Tencent executives said that the main paths include:
) game. The path most similar to the metaverse is games, which are virtual worlds. For games, they already have many ready-made components. I think the biggest challenge is integrating more virtual experiences, so "Fortnite" and "RocketLead" are an example, and "Roblox" encompasses many different so-called gaming experiences. We provide increasingly powerful tools that allow other amateur and professional content creators to create experiences in these virtual worlds, including non-game experiences.
) Move the user operation community , which already has a highly functional technical robot, from a text and image basis to a more immersive video basis. This is a scenario where companies like Discord have opportunities.
) leverages existing social networks. For social networks, we need to provide not only the 3D image function , but also the UGC and PGC tools that game companies need. So while social networks like Messenger and Snap have the most capital resources themselves, they also have a lot of work to do.
There are various signs that Tencent has great ambitions for the Metaverse, although it will take time. As Tencent Senior Vice President Ma Xiaoyi shared on multiple occasions, the Metaverse is now popular all over the world. But Tencent hopes to view this "next big thing" and its impact on online games from a more realistic perspective. In the short term of two to three years, I am pessimistic about the Metaverse, but in the long term, 2030 is a baseline. "In the next 20-30 years, an integrated Internet experience with Metaverse as the core will give the entire society bring a greater impact."
It can be seen that Tencent really holds a lot of "good cards" in the metaverse. Standing at the top of the pyramid, overlooking the four directions, it will be up to see how it plays its cards in the future!
