Why Tencent Is Selling Its Stakes in Japanese Game Studios — and Which Studios Are Safe

Tencent Holdings is reportedly in early-stage talks to divest from several of its minority stakes in Japanese game studios, including Tokyo-listed Marvelous Inc., as part of a company-wide reassessment of its global portfolio . The primary driver is that the originally anticipated synergies with these studios have either diminished or failed to materialize , and Tencent is prepared to sell shares back to original management teams even at a loss . This marks a sharp reversal from the 2020-era strategy when Tencent aggressively bought minority stakes in undervalued creative studios across Japan .

Which studios remain unaffected? Two high-profile Japanese studios are explicitly not part of the divestment talks: FromSoftware (developer of Elden Ring and Dark Souls) and PlatinumGames (developer of Bayonetta and NieR:Automata). Both are considered core strategic holdings . The full list of studios being reviewed has not been publicly disclosed, but multiple outlets report that Marvelous and other underperforming positions are on the chopping block, while the FromSoftware and PlatinumGames bets are preserved .

How this connects to AI spending. Tencent's Japanese studio divestment is unfolding against a backdrop of surging capital expenditure on artificial intelligence. Key figures illustrate the scale: Tencent's capex more than tripled to $10.7 billion in 2024 (12% of revenue), up from under 5% two years earlier ; management guided to a similar low-teens percentage for 2025 ; in Q1 2026 alone, capex reached RMB 31.9 billion (~$4.4 billion), up 16% year-over-year and 63% quarter-over-quarter ; and Tencent plans to more than double its 2026 AI spending to over RMB 36 billion, up from RMB 18 billion in 2025 .

Bloomberg and multiple financial analysts directly tie the studio pullback to this AI spending race. Tencent faces intense pressure to keep up with Alibaba and ByteDance in a capital-intensive AI arms race, forcing it to scrutinize every investment for high-return potential . The gaming industry itself is also facing a prolonged slowdown, squeezing margins on Tencent's core gaming business even as it diverts massive capital toward AI infrastructure .

In short, Tencent is liquidating underperforming minority gaming bets to fund an escalating AI capex war, while protecting its most strategically valuable Japanese studio relationships (FromSoftware, PlatinumGames) and publicly reaffirming that gaming remains a core business .