Nintendo is working on bringing its flagship game console, the Nintendo Switch, to China in the future, and has started to explain how the Chinese company Tencent will help make that launch possible.
Talk of a Switch launch in China started circulating a few months back, and the pair announced shortly after that they would hold a joint press conference to shed more light on the process.
During that conference today, Nintendo explained that its partnership with Tencent serves to ease the localization process of some existing games, and that the massive Chinese company will also assist in getting some of the Switch’s online services functional in the country.
According to Engadget, Tencent is on board to provide cloud services for Nintendo’s Switch Online service, as well as get the console’s digital games store set up to work with Tencent’s own WeChat payment system.
China is a difficult market to launch games in, and that’s especially true for consoles. The country only recently started allowing companies like Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft to sell game consoles in China, and even then those launches are subject to China’s inescapably strict approvals process.