Alibaba will soon be branching out into mobile gaming

Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce giant, has announced plans to branch out into mobile gaming. As Alibaba makes a move into mobile gaming, it remains to be seen how much of an impact it can make, given that Tencent has already had a huge headstart in this and a history of developing games via its online multiplayer games on Web portal QQ Games.

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is making a move into mobile gaming, as the company laid out plans for its strategy today, relayed to TNW by a spokeswoman. It is setting up its own mobile gaming platform in the near future as it seeks to disrupt the current situation in which it claims Chinese Internet giant Tencent is monopolizing. This no doubt comes as Tencent has been stepping up integration of its games into its wildly-popular messaging service WeChat (users in China get a version known as Weixin). In the first three months of introducing mobile games into Weixin, they passed 570 million downloads. A report by Chinese Android app store Wandoujia last year also noted that Weixin was disrupting mobile games in China.