Yooka-Laylee creator Playtonic is getting quite a bit bigger, and Chinese conglomerate Tencent--an increasingly huge presence in the industry--now owns a minority stake in the company. It's all part of Playtonic's plans for continued growth and turning the Yooka-Laylee franchise into something big enough to warrant Happy Meal toys.
Under the agreement, Playtonic will still maintain complete creative control and will expand from one team to several, and will possibly open additional offices in new locations. Danny Spiteri, who previously worked at both Raw Fury and Team17, will serve as head of publishing.
Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, managing director Gavin Price said that Playtonic has lofty ambitions for Yooka-Laylee.
"...we wanted to have an aspiration goal as well, which was to make Yooka-Laylee an IP that could appear on a major fast food chain's kids meal box," he said.
Price added that Tencent has reacted with confusion when he has asked them to approve certain ideas, suggesting he won't deal with micromanaging while planning future projects. Those projects won't all be 3D platformers like the first Yooka-Laylee, but the company's ambitions for the IP suggest there will almost certainly be another game in the series.
The sequel, Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair, largely shifted to a sidescrolling perspective and received better reviews than the first game. The original--and its main characters--were heavily inspired by Rare's Banjo-Kazooie, which many of Playtonic's developers had worked on.