Riot owner Tencent to launch League of Legends-ready console in China

At the Consumer Electronics Show Asia in Shanghai last week Chinese firm Tencent unveiled a new console, manufactured in partnership with Intel and Haier, that's capable of playing games like League of Legends and Monster Hunter Online running on either Windows 10 or the company's own "TGP Box" mode.

That's TGP for "Tencent Games Platform," and Tencent's calling its new console platform the "TGP Box", though AllChinaTech reports this particular version is also being referred to as the Blade. It's an interesting move for Tencent, which is regularly pegged as one of the biggest game companies in the world in terms of revenue.

However, it's not unprecedented -- China loosened a longstanding official ban on game console sales back in 2014, and since then a plethora of companies have joined console heavyweights Sony and Microsoft in producing game consoles and console-like devices for the Chinese market.

That includes companies like Fuze, which recently laid plans to compete with Sony and Microsoft in China with its upcoming F1 console, and Tencent itself, which has already dabbled in the Chinese console market with hardware like the Ministation Android microconsole.

It's yet unclear what plans, if any, Tencent and its partners have to push the TGP Box beyond the borders of China. The console itself runs on a sixth-generation Intel processor, and appears to ship with a gamepad.