Tencent Holdings Ltd. will acquire a 20 percent investment in the Marvelous Inc. of Japan, providing the smaller business funding to grow its gaming franchises and promoting the content that Tencent itself will offer customers.

The Shenzhen-headquartered Tencent, which operates the biggest video games business in the world in terms of sales, would spend some 7 billion yen ($65 million) on buying stock in the company through its subsidiary, Image Frame Investment, the Japanese games developer disclosed in a statement.

Marvelous will unload 8.6 million worth of shares valued at 576 yen each, while Amuse Capital and Nakayama Hayao stakeholders will sell 2.8 million and 708,600 shares at the same value, respectively.

In response to Tencent's investment in Marvelous, as reported by Bloomberg, Hideki Yasuda, an analyst at Ace Research Institute, said Tencent's justification for the investment is possibly to learn how to produce console-based games from Japanese players, one of the last frontiers for the gaming industry of the Chinese tech giant.

Fans of Marvelous products outside Japan could see more Western releases of the locally famous titles with this new growth. This is not the first time that Marvelous has signed a deal with Tencent. Marvelous licensed the Story of Seasons property to Tencent in March last year for the development of a mobile game based on the franchise.  

The firm is not normally the direct investor in these matters, Tencent disclosed. As Image Frame Investment is a wholly-owned unit of Tencent, and also being an investment holding firm, it was agreed that the acquired stocks would be kept by Image Frame.

Tencent was among China's most successful overseas investors, funding anything from tech startups to Tim Hortons' chain of doughnuts and coffee. Tencent has invested in Epic Games, the North Carolina-headquartered firm that created Fortnite, and South Korean developer Bluehole, which fostered PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, more popularly known as PUBG.

Marvelous disclosed that it anticipates the ongoing global health crisis and 5th-generation wireless services will serve as an impetus to deliver a positive transformation to the gaming market. Gamers will require more from each title and that will prompt game makers to boost their offering.

In their recent statement, Marvelous also said the reason for this deal with Tencent was for them to focus on and invest in new games. Furthermore, the agreement will enable the company to come up with new offerings and expand in other parts of the globe. Marvelous is currently looking to launch new game franchises in the next three years with the capital from this deal.