(Bloomberg) -- Tencent Holdings Ltd. has won approval to distribute Nintendo Co.’s Switch console version of Super Mario U, according to a notice on the website of the China’s Guangdong provincial culture and tourism department.

A Nintendo spokesman confirmed that Tencent had applied for the sales of Switch hardware, without elaborating further. Earlier this year the Kyoto-based company unveiled new games for the console to revive slumping sales.

Tencent could prove a valuable ally in the world’s largest gaming market. In January, Nintendo cut its outlook for annual Switch shipments, the strongest sign yet that the hybrid console is struggling to attract a wider swath of users and become a worthy successor to the Wii. Switch shipments for the fiscal year through March, compared with its prior outlook for 20 million units and analysts’ average prediction for 18 million.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ben Sharples in Hong Kong at bsharples@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Edwin Chan at echan273@bloomberg.net, Gregory Turk

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