Tencent To Offer Metaverse Building Services to Asian Markets

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Tencent, a tech conglomerate from China, announced its all-new metaverse suite, an addition to its product portfolio called “metaverse-in-a-box”, that’ll assist third-party companies in building virtual worlds & expand the list of media offerings for Tencent.

Tencent Offers Metaverse Building Services to Asian Markets

Tencent is one of the biggest tech companies in China, among the top 5, to be precise, and it has made some important announcements regarding the company’s metaverse strategy for the future. “Metaverse-in-a-box”, a recent introduction from the cloud division of the company, will enable users to build virtual worlds and thus fuel their web3 initiatives.

Companies in the fields of gaming, media, entertainment, and retail will be using these sets of tools offered by Tencent to design and build their metaverse spaces. And Asian markets, such as Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand in particular, will be the first ones to avail of these services as Tencent believes in a high growth potential in these areas.

Tencent’s passion for developing into a web3 ecosystem is reflected in a statement from Poshu Yeung, Senior vice president at Tencent cloud international, that reads:

We see a future with Web3, a new iteration of the internet that ushers in the concept of ‘immersive convergence’ where the physical and digital economies meet and integrate. With more businesses now keen to explore and adapt to an efficient, transparent digital future, we are ready to leverage our technical experience in the fields of games, audio, and video to provide technical support for Web3, and work with industry partners to create a more immersive experience and nurture a better Web3 ecosystem.

The company plans to leverage its technical expertise in audio, video, and gaming by providing technical support for web3. By working together with leading web3 industry partners, the company wants to provide better support for the new age of the internet and help create a highly immersive metaverse experience.

This move from the company complements the media services offering launched by the company last year, where it unveiled cloud media services at Tencent Global Digital Ecosystem Summit. As of today, Tencent’s cloud services have been recognized as the number one provider in the media services market across Singapore and 8 other markets in the region1.

Notably enough, Tencent’s announcement of new plans hints towards the company doubling down on what it’s already known for; software development. This comes after the company announced that it would be developing hardware for metaverse services last year, while recent additions suggest that this initiative has been canceled, and the team working on it will soon be disbanded.

Although, the company has suggested changes in staff adjustments as the reason for these layoffs. Due to a change of plans in staff structure, as indicated by the company, Tencent will be cutting down a significant number of people in its metaverse-related division.

Tencent Reluctant To Share AI Developments While Its Web3 Spirit Flies High

Tencent launched a media services division last year, where it offered services ranging from video-on-demand, live streaming, real-time communication, and instant messaging services, among many other things. The list included a total of 400 services, while 250 were exclusive only to China.

The tech conglomerate expects a 19-fold growth in the Asia-Pacific region between 2016 to 2026 as it remains highly positive about market opportunities in media services. The company’s “Immersive Convergence” strategy, which includes web3 tools and services, will help bridge the divide between digital and physical environments, offering seamless connectivity and a great user experience.

When asked how AI tools fit into the company’s strategy since advanced language model AI such as ChatGPT has been making waves in the market in the little time they’ve been live, AI chatbots offered by the company have failed to gain much momentum.

In addition to examples of industry competitors, such as Microsoft and Google breaking their silence over their respective ChatGPT alternatives plus, Alibaba announced that it is working on a ChatGPT-style AI chatbot of its own, currently under testing by its employees.

The company said that it is exploring similar plans. However, the executives of the company were quite reluctant to share a definite plan of action.

They didn’t, however, fail to display their involvement in the industry as Yeung commented on the company’s involvement with integrating AI technologies in their ecosystem for years. And highlighting that the company had been working on metaverse technologies even before the term was known in the mainstream or established in the industry.

He further added that the company does not have any specific plans relating to ChatGPT, but it will continue to work in AI and foster further developments. As for the company’s web3 plans, Tencent plans to develop its blockchain API services in partnership with Ankr, a web3 infrastructure provider, to power a global decentralized network that can host web3 development projects.

Microsoft Compromises on Metaverse & Double Downs On AI

While Tencent is moving strong with its metaverse strategies, focusing on software development in the web3 ecosystem. Companies such as Microsoft have put a lock on a metaverse project that was responsible for the development and promotion of Microsoft’s Industrial Metaverse group.

The tech giant has reportedly terminated a group of 100 people in the industrial metaverse core group after laying off 10,000 employees at the start of the year. The Industrial Metaverse core group has been abandoned as the company shifts its focus to other incentives.

This group was essentially focused on bringing the metaverse to industrial environments. It offered services such as providing metaverse interfaces to control electrical power plants, robotics, and transportation networks.

The move has been an outcome of diverting resources from metaverse initiatives to areas of Artificial Intelligence as the company continues to fund AI-based startups, such as making a multi-billion dollar investment in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.

Tencent’s focus on the metaverse will be particularly delightful to watch in an environment where other companies target AI objectives and withdraw from their metaverse investments.