Tencent focuses on metaverse development with new extended reality unit

Chinese tech giant Tencent has launched a dedicated ‘extended reality’ unit, as the company looks to heavily invest in the metaverse.

The company announced the unit’s creation to staff earlier this week (via Reuters), with it charged with building Tencent’s extended reality business across software and hardware. The unit will be led by Tencent Games Global’s CTO Li Shen, and will fall under Tencent’s Interactive Entertainment business group.

The report claims that the unit was formed earlier this year, but that it had been largely kept under wraps by Tencent. 

Now that it is in the open, the unit will eventually have more than 300 staff, but Tencent will adjust this number based on its performance and the ongoing state of the metaverse industry. 

Tencent is the latest tech giant to invest heavily into the concept of the metaverse. Meta, which was rebranded from Facebook in late 2021, is an early leader in the space, but the likes of Microsoft, Disney, Apple and TikTok are all involved in metaverse.

The news comes in the same week that the Khronos Group-hosted Metaverse Standards Forum was founded. The Forum looks to create standards for the industry, and has founding members including Meta, Microsoft, Epic Games, Adobe, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Huawei and others.