Huawei and Tencent team up to create a cloud gaming platform

According to Reuters, Huawei has joined forces with Tencent, a behemoth in internet services and the video games industry.

The two Chinese companies are aiming to develop a cloud gaming platform, with the news coming just months after Google's own cloud gaming service Stadia launched.

Reuters notes that a processor developed by Huawei, named Kunpeng, will be used to build Tencent's cloud gaming platform, GameMatrix. In addition, the companies will explore the use of artificial intelligence and augmented reality in games.

Augmented reality (AR) is also speculated to be used in an upcoming Apple headset, as AR is also a fairly untapped market that could go big in the near future.

Tencent has previously invested in Huawei servers, and with cloud gaming having the potential to change an entire industry, a collaboration between those two giants will pose a considerable threat to rival services such as Google Stadia and Microsoft's Project xCloud.

Cloud gaming services are often compared to being like Netflix but for video games. They use their own servers to do all the heavy lifting a user's gaming console or PC normally would. Therefore, users can remotely play those games as long as they have a subscription to a cloud gaming service and a compatible device to access it. As an example, for Google Stadia no computers or consoles are required, just a fast internet connection and a phone or tablet. We're yet to see how Huawei and Tencent's service will function.

Huawei is the world's third biggest smartphone company by market share, behind Apple and Samsung. Due to privacy concerns, it was banned from selling phones with Google's Mobile Services (including Google Play) installed on them or collaborating with any US companies. As the Chinese giant expands into other ventures such as cloud gaming, concerns over its users' privacy will likely be raised again.