Tencent owns a lot of stake in various companies, a prospect that only grows with time. Well, it looks like the Chinese mega-corporation is only increasing in size thanks to big players hooking up with the company, such as Sega Europe’s executive vice president of publishing John Clark.
For those unaware as to what John Clark does as Sega Europe’s executive vice president, he essentially is responsible for the UK packaged goods business for Sega. He’s also responsible for delivering Sega’s digital revenues across the U.S., the EMA, and the PC platform.
In some regards, he also has to oversee ports and their data like the Yakuza games coming to PC where Clark had this to say:
“To make a quality PC port is the key, it’s in the mindset of [Sega] Japan and Europe now, and the U.S., to think of it as a multi-format offering. That’s not saying everything’s going to be multi-format, but we’re able now to consider that data.”
Well, his new move to Tencent follows former Sega Europe COO and president Jurgen Post’s transition (in August 2017) as per gamesindustry.biz.
The website iterates that Clark joined Sega in 2007 as UK managing director. Clark would later move up the ladder to become UK MD and digital distribution director in 2010.
Four years later in 2014, Clark would face a promotion moving up to SVP of commercial publishing, before taking another leap to EVP of publishing three years later in 2017.
Despite moving up the ladder at Sega Europe like an apex predator on the food chain, Clark turned in his badge in to be with the Chinese big boys that happen to own stock in Riot Games, Epic Games, Funcom, Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard, and Paradox Interactive.
As a matter of fact, Tencent’s president Martin Lau had the following to say about the success of their co-developed work with Activision Blizzard, which is best known as Call of Duty: Mobile, in a recent piece by mcvuk.com:
“We have made encouraging progress toward globalising our business, particularly for online games, where we created, published and operated some of the most popular mobile games outside China. In the most recent quarter, Call of Duty: Mobile, which we co-developed with Activision Blizzard, gained more than 4 million five-star reviews on Google Play and a 4.9 rating on iOS following its October launch, which has become one of the most successful mobile game launches in the past couple of years.”
It is said that Tencent is reporting a boost in year-over-year (YoY) revenue thanks to the performance of its mobile division, including PUBG mobile and Call of Duty: Mobile. In other words, Clark is going where the money flows.
Lastly, Sega hasn’t announced who will replace Clark as of this writing.
