French video game publisher Ubisoft has created a subsidiary focused on three of its most iconic and narratively cohesive brands: the worlds of the time-shifting actioner “Assassin’s Creed,” anthology mystery “Far Cry,” and tactical combat thriller “Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six.” Essentially a spin-off unit, Ubisoft has secured backing from its minority investor Tencent, which is plowing $1.25 billion into the new venture. The Chinese game giant — sixteenth on the Companies Market Cap list of the world’s most valuable companies, at $593 billion as of this month — in September 2022 upped its stake to 10 percent of Ubisoft.

In an announcement, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot called the move “a new chapter” in the company’s history, citing “a foundational step in changing Ubisoft’s operating model” that will involve “creating new IPs powered by cutting-edge and emerging technologies,” which could involve a move to VR.

Tencent has had several false starts into virtual reality, including a partnership with Meta Platforms that was to have produced an affordably priced headset (informally referred to as “Quest 3 Lite”) for the Chinese market by late 2024. That device has yet to issue.

ByteDance has been plugging away with its Pico series. Released in Q4 in China and Europe, the Pico 4 Ultra mixed reality headset features a Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chip, 12GB of RAM, and spatial video capture.

“Tencent and ByteDance are pretty direct competitors in China, but Tencent doesn’t have any VR headsets under its belt: something that is quickly becoming a requirement, as XR is probably going to become really impactful in the following decade,” reports PhoneArena.

VentureBeat seems to see it as a more conventional games move, quoting DFC Intelligence CEO David Cole suggesting, “Tencent is really willing to spend to get into Western markets. They have quite a portfolio and even if they pay top dollar they can afford it.”

Variety writes that “while it was well known throughout the industry that Ubisoft leadership has been exploring a potential buyout or sale since first reporting lower than expected sales for ‘Star Wars Outlaws’ last year and multiple delays of ‘Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ (just released March 20), this spinoff move was not one of the anticipated outcomes.”

Bloomberg casts the deal “a key lifeline,” noting that Ubisoft lost half its market cap last year, writing that while “Assassin’s Creed” “got a gold medal of its own during last year’s Paris Olympics, with its iconic rooftop-scaling hooded main character featuring heavily in the opening ceremony alongside Lady Gaga and Louis Vuitton,” only to see that crowning achievement turn into “a painful stock-market drubbing in the months that followed.”

“Today,” Bloomberg writes, “things are looking brighter.”