Genshin Impact, the hit anime RPG from Shanghai developer HoYoverse, generated $3.7 billion in revenue since it first launched on Sept. 28, 2020, a new report from analyst firm Sensor Tower shows, and that number is only from the game’s mobile version. Sensor Tower’s report doesn’t include revenue from Genshin Impact’s PC and console versions.
Sensor Tower mobile insights strategist Craig Chapple said Genshin Impact is China’s number one market for player spending and accounts for 33 percent of mobile revenue there, while worldwide, the gacha game is the third highest revenue generating title, behind only PUBG Mobile ($4.9 billion) and Honor of Kings ($5.5 billion).
While the rest of the mobile games industry witnessed declines in spending during 2022’s first two quarters, Genshin Impact saw player spending increase by 16 percent in the first quarter and 28 percent in the second quarter.
Chapple attributes this success to HoYoverse developing Genshin Impact with a global audience in mind.
“ has taken the learnings from its past games such as Honkai Impact 3rd, which itself has now surpassed $1 billion in global player spending, and applied them to huge success,” Chapple said in the report. “Combining an effective gacha monetization system with an almost industrial scale live operations strategy supplying regular content updates and popular new characters, miHoYo has kept Genshin Impact relevant and bucking the recent trends of the rest of the industry.”
That trend seems unlikely to change as well. HoYoverse recently released Genshin Impact version 3.1, adding a new desert region and several new characters for players to spend on, with two more highly anticipated characters confirmed for the 3.2 update as well.
Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF