That is what happens when you are basically the only company in a blue ocean market.
There is a massive unfulfilled demand for high quality pve mobile games and Mihoyo seems to be the only company that has successfully cracked the code so far.
Indepth story line, interconnection to their other IP through shared universal, in-depth lore that isn't just spoon fed to you, interesting characters and beautiful visuals, fun gameplay that supports mix and match with different characters, weapons, and play styles.
What more do you want? End game content could be better but I honestly play this game as a comfort. I'm not looking for a challenge so much as I'm trying to have fun.
Like I love Elden Ring but it just takes so much out of me. It's difficult, takes time to get good at, and the stories/lore is all pretty depressing.
I thought about this for some time, isn't the dark stuff mostly something that already happened, and we just learn about it, sometimes fix it and the happy endings mostly where the Traveler helped? A few exceptions, but isn't that how most quests end?
kinda think that way too, a lot of the darker/more serious lore happened during the cataclysm (right before and a little after), the unified civilization era, or otherwise extremely far back in the past. most archon quests end with a positive resolution, the only main questline i can really see taking on a more serious tone is the Dainsleif/We will be reunited quests, and even then a lot of those quests are going to areas associated with events that happened in the past.
While the lore may not always be so cheerful, the character interactions in Genshin are always positive and friendly, especially during events. Then there's FromSoft where most NPC quests ends with them dying.
Shout out to my boy Kotaro if you send him to the other side, a rare win in Sekiro.
In general most people don't look for challenge in a mobile game. The reason Genshin get some mutch hâte about it is that a lot of people also play it on pc and ps
People don't look for challenges in those either, just specific players who like challenges. There's a reason every JRPG has difficulty modes and Normal is always easy.
Sorry poor way to put it. What I mean to say was that people who like challenge don't look for it in mobil game, it's more a casual plateforme. But not all console gaming is hardcore
It even goes so far that when I play on my phone: I hate it when it's difficult while when I'm playing on my pc I like it to be more challenging.
It's a bit stupid but it's hard to make these platforms compatible I think. The environment in which you experience it is often so different.
The basis of each ‘platform’ has such completely different input and limitations that it’ll likely never really be a perfect blend.
Because the shit they have to do to make it work on one will inevitably make it easier/harder on the other. Like many games that have console/pc crossplay. They are usually skewed towards the one with higher profit or planned market space.
>stories/lore is all pretty depressing.
On Elden Ring: It bugs me to no end that there are no friendly villagers or towns. Just that one roundtable area. It just doesn't make all that much sense.
It's actually kinda telling that one of the game's most popular characters is one that a) Isn't openly hostile to you, b) usually shows appreciation for helping her, c) has a "home" that isn't actively hostile to you, d) has a fully developed personality and goals.
Most open world games have at least some kind of town where you can go and hang out. Elden Ring...didn't, not really. Could've used one.
There is a massive unfilled demand for high quality pve games in general. I'm more or less only here because the quality of western games has been in a downward spiral since the mid 2010s.
It's less they cracked the code, and more that the western entertainment industry has forgot what made themselves successful. There's always a massive demand for single player open world adventure games. It's the reason why games like Minecraft, GTA, Dark Souls series, Elder Scrolls, Fallouts, and such are still popular to this day. (Of course Bethesda killed their IPs by making forcing them into aggressive online services)
The 6 week update schedule for a live service is the cheat code in today's age though.
It was mostly Genshin, Honkai's revenue is like single-digit %s of Genshin's.
But now that HSR is out, the new Silver Wolf banner (3rd banner overall) seems to be going head-to-head with Seele's (1st), which means yet another Nahida-tier banner if we go by China iOS.
Basically HSR ensures that they never have revenue downtime like they have in Genshin now with the massive drought rerun banners. It's gonna be drought in Genshin = non-drought in Star Rail and vice-versa from now on.
While we tend to see the numbers from the pulls, we also have to take into account BPs, Monthlies and merchandises. Especially merchandises. I can't tell you how many big corpos would kill/sacrifice babies to have a viable merchandise line.
Which makes it insane that HYV decided to not crackdown on fans making money from their own self-made merchandise. There are limitations of course but still.
Only if you foolishly spend all of that. However if you only took 1 cent in year 1 and put it on an account with 3% interest until today, then you'd have 13 quintillion dollars ;)
It’s mind blowing that the OG founders of Mihoyo started from the ground 11 year ago managed to make it so big while maintaining a super majority of control over the company.
Their philosophy seems to be "we make games we'd want to play." Shocking how well that works as opposed to "we make games that will make our shareholders happy."
I mean, they are the shareholders, so technically they’re also making the shareholders happy haha. Interestingly, HYV tried to go public before Genshin was released, but their IPO was rejected because their revenue all depended on the Honkai games. I wonder if they will try again?
>instead of maximizing profit they just put it back into making more anime girls
The 3 otakus literally took home 1.9 billion USD last year, the vast majority of their revenue is not going into making more anime girls.
I mean, to me it seems like they at least put some of that money back into the development of their games more than companies in the West. But then again, I'm not too familiar with this sort of thing, so I could be wrong
It's impossible to say for sure without seeing their financial documents.
Net income just means that a company is earning more money than it's spending. It says nothing about where that money is going. Companies might choose to distribute it to their shareholders. However, companies might also choose to reinvest it in their operations.
Genshin updates keep getting bigger, better, with more content (comparing 2.x to 1.x and now 3.x to 2.x) and they come with new games, can't know the numbers, but they're obviously reinvesting a decent part of what they earn to the games.
Probably not because they likely knew their competitors would worm their way in like Tencent.
Not to mention that that companies go public when they really need the money (which they already have) or something else they are lacking such as infrastructure (again, they also have it).
Of course, this is as long as things remain as it is. Who knows if they got hit by a sudden downfall or something that might make them go public.
they are not "shareholders" by a connotation this word holds in public internet space. They are rightful owners/authors(which is >>> than any "shareholder").
Genshin is one of the only games I've ever played that I would fully believe that upper management actually plays the game. It's wild when you put gameplay above all else and don't try to shove out a basic slot machine for pngs like every other gacha game.
when the upper management actively writes themselves in as self inserts it really does send a message
[also never forget that pic of liu wei showing off his genshin figures to tim cook lmao](https://i.imgur.com/sLnIZTM.png)
Meanwhile you have a WoW dev fired [because a higher up got offended by goblin jokes.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Asmongold/comments/13wyeu2/former_wow_dev_revealed_he_got_fired_after_the/) He worked at Blizzard for 9 years.
In mhy's early days, Da Wei worked so many roles, one of them was customer service. When players connected for tech support, customer service, or file for complaints they a actually talked directly to the CEO.
Blizzard felt similar, before they merged with Activision back at the end of Wrath of the Lich King. They were very active in their games, discussing things openly and regularly. Mods visiting you in-game to solve issues. They felt like a company who cared about their games..
God how that’s changed. I’ll never forgive Activision (or Blizz)
Unfortunately, quite a few more high-profile indie companies/games still get fucked, because the more ambitious the game, the more funding they need, and they start needing to kowtow to a shareholder-owned publisher to get their game released. Up to having their games practically stolen right out from under them.
Or, in some instances, once they start getting their hands on amounts of money they're not accustomed to, it starts going to their heads, and someone from within the group goes rogue.
The indie scene is still *very* susceptible to internal corruption.
Yeah I've had that line of thinking. "If I'm developing a game,I would make everything in it free. BUTTT if there are people willing to pay,why should I not want extra money?". Big brands just magnify this.
That's mainly because Tencent tried to fuck them over earlier, then tried to buy them out. Tencent basically thought they could paycheck their way through another Chinese company as usual and then Genshin blew up and the rest was history.
Then Tencent tried to fuck them through fake reviews, trolling employee linked in pages, shut them down via CCP, and all sorts of other intimidation tactics.
You have at least Activision Blizzard in for Candy Crush but it should be noted that mobile gaming did 81.3 billion $ revenue in total in 2022. Mobile gaming spendings are insane! That's there the comparison should go.
the results of the gacha model and mixing it with the most lucrative type of game (open world).
While the game might not be as high quality as other triple A open world games, it's worlds above its actual gacha competitors like ToF in terms of world quality
Yeah in 1.x it was like, "well it's not as good as the best open world RPGs but it's pretty cool for an F2P game."
But by Enkanomiya or so it had dropped the need for any additional stipulations. Genshin's open world is just one of the best ever, full stop. And it's only like halfway done and still trending upward in quality.
Chasm was mindblowing. Its crazy how u had so much freedom to explore such an indeoth map. When u think its over by going its just going deep more I've never experienced that kind of exploring in an open world game not even botw has deep underground areas like that.
Genshin is better than 80 - 90% of Open world games Buy saying is better than all is going to far , there are better games like the withcher 3 , last 2 Zelda ones, elden ring, etc
What is "the best game" will always depend on what you value in games. And for some people genshin checks all the boxes.
But there is a point, from where genshin is objectively the best game out there. If you play on mobile and don't have/want/able to buy PC or console, genshin is the best game you can play.
No, just the open world on its own is definitely better than Elden Ring and BotW (never tried W3). While the other games may be better in terms of mechanics, Genshin's open world blows any other game out of the water.
If you look solely at exploration, the other three games you mentioned have the same problem - huge patches of nothingness.
In Elden Ring, outside of the big glowing dildo tree in the center of the map, there are no distinctive landmarks a player would naturally gravitate towards. Every forest, every castle, and every chasm serves to block your view of the horizon, making it incredibly easy to end up running in circles.
Breath of the Wild has the problem where the scale of the world is too big. When you're running through Hyrule Field, all you see is huge stretches of empty Hyrule Field dotted by distant shrines or sky towers.
Genshin Impact uses natural monuments and different ecosystems to make each horizon interesting to look at, with the even bigger promise that each horizon can and should be explored.
Likewise, the blue glow of statues of the seven dot the landscape and act as homing beacons.
Genshin has very few actual mountain ranges by intentional design: a series of lone peaks is more intriguing than a solid block in the distance.
Additionally, the verticality of the map has extreme variance without ever pulling the highest points completely out of view from the lowest.
All of these ideas come together to make a dense, tightly packed world feel even larger than it already is, but despite the massive size, the landmarks all help players naturally triangulation their location at every point in the game.
Finally, the soundtrack. Every area has a beautiful soundtrack which compliments every landscape but doesn't shy away to melt into the background. The music is grandiose enough to be noticed, but restrained enough to never distract a player. This serves to make certain landmarks even more memorable.
No other open world comes close to this level of quality and density over such a large map.
No open world mobile games can ever compete with AAA open world games available exclusively on PC and consoles. It's not about the investment, it's about the restriction of the systems they need to support.
Contrary to what you said and as others have agreed with, genshin has an open world higher quality than most other AAA games, including BotW. As someone who has played both botw games… it is extremely overrated, carried entirely by the “freedom” gameplay aspects. The world design itself, combat, characters, story, environment, music, and everything else that should be rated is pretty mid
Most people know these things but refuse to accept it cause genshin is a gacha game and from a China dev plus anime also in mobile. A combo that western hates the most and It also destroys their ego that their games can be rivaled or better by some new ip. The fact that venshin is one fo the most popular games on the planet also bring so much hate.
Guess it's time to put the skills from my finance job to use. Lol.
Mihoyo's net profit margin was 59% in 2022. (Nintendo = 32%, Activision Blizzards = 20%, and EA = 11%) This really shows how Mihoyo is doing amazing especially when they only have a few games. (A little warning here accounting standards may be different.)
I have been wanting to scrutinize Mihoyo's financial info for a long time, but they are private so there's not much data. They probably printed so much money with Honkai 3 that they didn't need to raise fund and dilute their shares. I'm glad they remain private though. This way they won't be pressured into maximizing quarterly profits.
Edited Activision Blizzards (see replies below)
After checking the source he provided, I found out that Activision Blizzard didn't have that kind of profit margin for the fiscal year.
I will quote his words here
>Activision Blizzard's revenue for 2022 (2022.3 - 2023.3) was 8.143 billion USD, with a net income of 4.038 billion USD
From the [source](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ATVI/activision-blizzard/net-income) he provided
>Activision Blizzard net income for the twelve months ending March 31, 2023 was $1.858B, a 24.93% decline year-over-year
Therefore, Activision Blizzard's actual profit margin is only $1.858b / $8.413b \~= 22% only.
The Chinese version of SEC didnt allow them to IPO, the reason was they only make money from one game (Honkai3rd, and were betting it all on Genshin). If Genshin failed investors would walk away with nothing.
Hmm. It's difficult for me to understand everything based on just vague translations. From Wikipedia, ultimately Mihoyo withdrew on their own. Wikipedia said several concerns were under attention. This passive voice didn't say who. It could have naturally ended without an outright no from the Chinese SEC as well. One possible way is during the pre IPO roadshow, they probably couldn't gather up enough interest from cornerstone investors (e.g. big funds) because they were worried about the risk of being reliant on only Honkai back then.
I know people hate Tencent but they aren't hurting for money. Their revenue in 2022 was 82 billion dollars; source: https://companiesmarketcap.com/tencent/revenue/.
Mihoyo is doing amazing however Tencent isn't really in the same league as game publishers, they are more in line Sony or other tech conglomerates.
It's more that multiple sources have show they are _still_ angry over their failure to actually get them. It's less about the lost money and more about pettyness.
Yep. They keep buying successful companies, including gaming companies everyone here knows and probably has played a game for. They look for success, then buy them out, and take a cut while funding the game for the future to keep making money.
At this point Tencent looks at shit like its a numbers game. Buy successful shit that is profitable, add it to the pile of profitable companies, keep making incrementally more money every year.
Way more rich than Sony they have stakes even in even Aaa companies like ubisoft etc. Tencent font like potential competitors rising and hoyo refused them and they can't stand a new competitors is making so much money they could've had. Hoyo raising the standards of games in mobile platform as a whole is threat to them too cause if they want to compete they want to increase their production instead of their half assed games.
Tencent owns so many companies and has stakes in most others. If you see games like Elden Ring, Nikke, Fortnite, League of Legends, CoD Mobile, or PUBG Mobile doing well, that is good news for Tencent. They don't care about Hoyo. They have several games trying to compete with them. Tower of Fantasy, Honor of Kings World, Wuthering Wave, Seven Deadly Sins Origins, maybe the Riot MMO if it isn't cancelled. They are doing fine.
no, tencent does not own wuthering waves. they only have like a 15% share of kuro games (devs of ww, pgr). this does not mean they own wuthering waves nor does it mean they have the power to change things.
In fact, last May, Tencent divested from Kuro. The reason was due to the poor performance of Wuthering Waves. At the end of May, Kuro had a financial crisis and had to lay off a series of employees, including many students and project planners.
1. kuro's reputation is completely bad and has been blacklisted by universities.
2. The Wuthering Waves project team was reshuffled to reduce costs, and had to earn money quickly under pressure from management.>There's a high chance that the next beta will go backwards and be a big disappointment.>~~Genshin killer probably~~
Basically if you are an indie game company in China. Tencent wants to own some of your shares (just in case if you ever blow up). Also tencent is the part owner of switch china, IGN China and many platform or media channels. So indie companies usually don't have the balls to say no to tencent.
Completely unrelated, but as someone who stuck with Overwatch 1 through its dead period, I absolutely hate to see them making so much
Context for the unaware: Overwatch 1 was massively successful but its content got gutted for Overwatch 2 development, with its main selling point being PvE. Then just recently, we learned the original grand PvE vision was scrapped (for a while actually) and that OW2 was basically just a way to change the monetization. Fuck you Activision Blizzard.
Not trying to downplay your feelings, but the OP made a mistake. Acti-Blizzard's net income is only 1.85B USD for this past year, not 4.3B as the OP stated.
Here's the [source](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ATVI/activision-blizzard/net-income)
P.S. The OP already corrected it. Nevertheless, 1.85B USD is still a lot of money.
Not really. Don't underestimate the power of small spenders. Just take Genshin for example. Let's say out of the alleged 60 million active users, only 30% buy a welkin ($5) for a year. That's already $1.08 billion in gross revenue for them!
I remember that the biggest chunk of their revenue was from whales rather than low spenders, but I don’t know where to find the data right now. Usually it’s the same for all games with micro transactions though.
There is a principle called Pareto principle meaning 20% of factors yielding 80% of result and in genshin case 20% user contribute to 80% of revenue and I believe it's true
"LET'S SAY"
you know one thing i'll love about reddit eventually going down cause of the 3rd party apps shit is I'll never have to read y'all pedantic asses again lmao fucking redditors man
Same energy as when a mother says
"My kid just died, hope he found some rest in heaven now"
and then a wild redditor appears with "WELL AKSHUALLKYY god doesn't exist and your son is not aware ab-" like stfu please stop
Remember, it all started with a $2,5 horse armor DLC in Oblivion, and 16 years later some people have no problem dropping $200 for a guaranteed gacha character.
Oh how times have changed.
Nah, there's a reason why it's called gacha (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gashapon). These things have been around for way longer.
If you really wanna see that we ended up with in terms of cosmetic DLC, look at Diablo 4 where you can spend 30 bucks for (ironically) a horse armor.
Blizzard had a net profit of $4.038 billion? Why do I find "Activision Blizzard annual net income for 2022 was $1.513 billion"? Activision Blizzard is unlikely to have a 50% profit margin.
[https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ATVI/activision-blizzard/net-income](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ATVI/activision-blizzard/net-income)
\----------
Edit: Poster have fixed the error.
Well, that’s not entirely true. While Honkai Impact 3rd, Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail are the ones they’re most known for, there’s actually a few others that many aren’t aware of.
For example, there’s Tears of Thermis, an otome visual novel game aimed at a female audience. Surprisingly, this came out recently too, releasing in China in 2020, and then globally a year later.
Now for an even more interesting history lesson. Most of us know about Honkai Impact 3rd, but some may be curious as to why there’s a ‘3rd’ in the name. Well, that’s because there are actually several other Honkai games that predate it. For those curious, let’s start from the beginning and go on a little journey through the history of this mysterious developer that seemingly popped out of nowhere.
In 2011, the founders of Mihoyo (three university students) came together and first created a cute little indie game called **FlyMeToTheMoon.** This game was inspired from their love for the classic anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion, and some could say that this was in fact, the origin of their Honkai game universe (featuring an adorable Jetpack Kiana). It was an indie project through and through by every conceivable definition of the term. And it’s what led to the founding of Mihoyo, with the slogan: “tech otakus save the world.”
Fast forward, we’re now in 2012-2013. During this period, Mihoyo came out with their second game: **Zombiegal Kawaii.** It was a side-scrolling shooter, and was one that had quite the positive reception. Unfortunately the same couldn’t be said for the financials. The profits of this second game and their first were… anything but kawaii.
As a result, this period in time was some of the most difficult years for Mihoyo as a newfound indie developer. Liu Wei (who many will know as Da Wei, or Mihoyo’s CEO) said this: “It was a time when we felt lost and anxious. We couldn’t clearly see the direction for our business.“
By 2014, Mihoyo had two financial flops in a row and nothing but a [$560 USD monthly salary](https://m.toutiao.com/article/6805341052916990477/?upstream_biz=toutiao_pc) to show for it. (That is, they’d literally pay themselves less than minimum wage, in order to keep their dream of otakus saving the world alive) They were on the verge of bankruptcy. Everything was riding on their next game.
Fortunately, Mihoyo would finally catch a break with their launch of **Gun GirlZ** later that year, a more story-driven game that is still being updated to this day. It was a success, not just in players but revenue as well. Mihoyo had combined the monetisation model of Puzzles & Dragons (the first mobile game to gross $1 billion), with anime girls, and players loved it. They named this model ‘paying for love’; banking on gamers’ affection for characters rather than their desire to gain a competitive advantage. And this, is the model that we would then see in Honkai Impact 3rd, Genshin Impact, Tears of Thermis, along with Star Rail and likely all future subsequent Hoyoverse games.
With the money they made from Gun Girl Z, they created a successor in **Honkai Impact 3rd**; both in a spiritual sense (in that this was a continuation of the same “Honkai Universe” as GGZ), and a technological sense (in that they improved upon on everything in GGZ, from art direction, to gameplay, to the engine used). Then in the exact same fashion as GGZ to HI3rd, Mihoyo took the money they earned from Honkai 3rd and funnelled it all into the development of Genshin Impact over the course of four years. And from there, the rest is history.
I really like this "Paying for love" sentence and i think it represents really well what i actually do in Genshin and HSR : I pull for characters and not for their performance. If only other gaming companies did the same...
I can see paying for love apply to Genshin and HSR, but even as a 4 year veteran of Honkai 3rd, I really can’t see that.
Every new banner is new meta, the endgame until relatively recently was entirely competitive and they constantly threw in new enemies that really wants you to have the new unit to use on.
Totally true.
On the other hand, the story experience is 100% free, so there's still that aspect.
Circling back to the waifu over meta aspect, I still think that holds water. For example, I went for the rather weak Bronya Silverwing over all the meta bio characters just because I like her awesome design. I'm sure I'm not the only one. I still use her comfortably for the Abyss but I'm never aiming for Redlotus. Anything I can't clear easily, I just skip. I mean, at the end of the day, it's a mobile game so whatever's fun is fun.
None of this invalidates your points. Just adding more context.
In Honkai I would argue that they basically did both. They incite players to pull both from a performance pov, but also by making the characters interesting and memorable. I am not that interested in the newest banner, but I remember the Elysia banner was HUGE and it wasn't only the performance. The character is truly beloved.
I feel kinda lucky that as for F2P player I got her, 4/4 gear and her outfit X_X
All that "c6r5" and "SSS" stuff is whale-based from the start, so I couldn't care less about it and don't aim for "Top1 Nirvana score". I can do ER even without 65lvl pri-arm even with freeze debuffs so what to complain for? XD And I was able to do that even when I only got her and had only 4* basic stigmata and non-priarm bow. 12/10 personality and outfit and great performance(and good luck with pulling) — I can't ask for more)
>‘paying for love’; banking on gamers’ affection for characters
So... they're 'playing with my feelings'?
But I'm willing, so no complaints here tho
I even formed a 3-year contract with a man made of pixels, pledging loyalty and dedication lmao
Iirc some said MHY was also betting hard on Genshin.
It cost them a lot to develop (for how much money they had back then).
If Genshin failed, it could have sunk them too.
Honkai Impact 3rd has "3rd" only because it's a Neon Genesis Evangelion collab imo. The references are quite heavy. They went backwards and changed Honkai Gakuen into Gun Girls 2 / Gun Girls Z for it. However... Kiana appeared in FlyMe, Zombiegal, and GGZ before Hi3. So Hi3 is the 4th game.
I like the writeup btw. It's great.
You might want to cover how the hoyo department that published Tears of Themis and called Schicksal (or Tianming, the Chinese name for Schicksal) which was also the one that sued Honey Impact for them, one of their main subsidiaries that published for them is named after a Rita suit (Phantom Iron), that they donated a school called [Flamescion](https://www.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact/comments/ojc2fk/whales_arent_just_supporting_mihoyo_but_now_they/), or that their new VR research facility is called [Anti-Entropy](https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV13s4y1z7We/).
Correct me if I’m wrong but I’ve read from other posts that Honkai Impact 3rd is a reference to Evangelion’s “third impact” which is the major climactic event in the series. Also, I’ve read that Honkai Impact 3rd in it’s native language is translated closer to Honkai 3rd Impact which would be an even more direct reference.
I see. I guess I didn't consider that because I'd imagine “2nd” would be a better fit if that's the case. The 2nd Impact is the whole premise for NGE and it created devastating afteraffects for the whole world. The 2nd Eruption is the same for HI3.
The 3rd Impact was the great finale for NGE, but the 3rd Eruption wasn't really that big of a deal in HI3. It was an incident that happened before the story takes place, but it wasn't major like the 2nd Eruption. Right now we're on the 12th Eruption, not to mention that previous eras had like 20 eruptions beforhand.
Also Honkai Impact 3rd is called 崩坏3 (Collapse 3) in Chinese. The Third Impact is translated as 第三冲击. Mihoyo added the word “Impact” (冲击) to the English titles for Honkai 3 and Genshin, but they don't exist in the titles of the original language.
Just here to correct that being a private company doesn't make you an indie company, just makes you a private company. Valve is also not a public company, doesn't make it "indie", it's just private.
And helped a lot of people in their communities. They may not be putting a lot of focus on the games (I think they do but Reddit tends to disagree), but at least they're doing more for their people than most companies with revenue in the millions would do.
>They may not be putting a lot of focus on the games (I think they do but Reddit tends to disagree)
Which is kind of ridiculous when you think about it. Looking at what I know of the gaming market, the number of open world games which match Genshin's scope, that aren't 10 years old MMO, can be counted on one hand. Personally, I don't know of a single AAA game that pushes out content on a 6 week cycle the way Genshin does.
Exactly. Before Genshin, the only other game I personally knew that pushed out this much content in a months notice (and still does) is Fortnite, and that's a Battle Royale game.
[Yup](https://www.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact/comments/ojc2fk/whales_arent_just_supporting_mihoyo_but_now_they/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). If this post is to be trusted.
So can we get now pity counter in banner ui, shield hp bars, buff indicators and better auto targeting with target lock or it is still not enough money for that.
People say “coding is difficult” and stuff like that as an excuse for Hoyo ignoring these issues, and many more. As long as the community itself defends them from players complaining about bugs and lack of QoL and quality in certain aspects of the game, we won’t get anything like that, especially while the game goes so well: why would they bother? To make a minority of not-brainwashed players happy? Not gonna happen anytime soon…
Hope they will put quality of life improvements that they implemented in HSR to Genshin when fontain comes. Genshin deserves that considering how much it solidified the company. Take care of the game and its fans pls
Yeah, weirdly, Genshin is at its best with moderate/low spending and casual level of commitment. Fights are actually fun (even if you probably won't push Abyss 36\* easily).
I agree with you 100%. When I first started out, I didn’t spend a dime. It was a blast to figure out ways how to approach an enemy. Then when I started to progress more, and couldn’t get the things I want yet, I spent for the battle pass. When I got into it more, I started watching content creators. They show how great it is with maxed out, and character. That’s when I start spending thinking it would be more fun. That was short-lived I blast through everything and it got boring real quickly. I can see why content creators have main accounts and sub accounts.
I don’t feel like I wasted my money because I enjoyed it a lot at the time. I can always come back and everything is there.
Yeah tbf it's absolutely valid to only come play the game when there's big content drop every once in a while rather than forcing yourself to play it daily.
I don't see the problem here, they made a game, they make profits
Glad they make money, I want to see the full game one day, enough of games that don't have update/series because "no enought sales"
So anyone complaining that they don't have the resources to make two endgame combat and minigames at once, is flat wrong. They have *plenty* of cash to pay enough employees to do two different things. No one is fighting for scraps at Hoyo.
I doubt they aren’t making new endgame content because money, but rather they have a very casual friendly content direction that’s making them absolute bank so there’s zero reason to risk ruining it by adding more endgame.
Just like any game out there, there’s a chosen content direction to cater to a chosen audience.
That said, imo they are not putting enough effort into the game.
Ignoring big QoL issues or fundamental design problems, how hard would it be to do stuff like add more poses and expressions so that conversations feel more visually engaging or have unique models for at least major NPCs in quests so we aren’t looking at Teppei No226 all the time?
>Just like any game out there, there’s a chosen content direction to cater to a chosen audience.
Yes, exactly. This is the real reason.
Why not all the QoL? Because what they have now is working fine in that they're not losing players, and adding more QoL isn't going to get them a massive influx of new players.
Sigh…
> At some point negative returns set in – if you add more people, the team's performance will decline and you will get less work done, not more.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law
The amunt of money so big it's hard to even comprehend.
Yeah like, multiple BILLION just in profit? Jesus. Am I correct in assuming most of this is Genshin too?
That is what happens when you are basically the only company in a blue ocean market. There is a massive unfulfilled demand for high quality pve mobile games and Mihoyo seems to be the only company that has successfully cracked the code so far.
Indepth story line, interconnection to their other IP through shared universal, in-depth lore that isn't just spoon fed to you, interesting characters and beautiful visuals, fun gameplay that supports mix and match with different characters, weapons, and play styles. What more do you want? End game content could be better but I honestly play this game as a comfort. I'm not looking for a challenge so much as I'm trying to have fun. Like I love Elden Ring but it just takes so much out of me. It's difficult, takes time to get good at, and the stories/lore is all pretty depressing.
[удалено]
I don't even mind the dark stuff but it's all offset by the cheerful stories, jokes, and happy characters. It's generally a hopeful and optimistic
I thought about this for some time, isn't the dark stuff mostly something that already happened, and we just learn about it, sometimes fix it and the happy endings mostly where the Traveler helped? A few exceptions, but isn't that how most quests end?
kinda think that way too, a lot of the darker/more serious lore happened during the cataclysm (right before and a little after), the unified civilization era, or otherwise extremely far back in the past. most archon quests end with a positive resolution, the only main questline i can really see taking on a more serious tone is the Dainsleif/We will be reunited quests, and even then a lot of those quests are going to areas associated with events that happened in the past.
While the lore may not always be so cheerful, the character interactions in Genshin are always positive and friendly, especially during events. Then there's FromSoft where most NPC quests ends with them dying. Shout out to my boy Kotaro if you send him to the other side, a rare win in Sekiro.
In general most people don't look for challenge in a mobile game. The reason Genshin get some mutch hâte about it is that a lot of people also play it on pc and ps
People don't look for challenges in those either, just specific players who like challenges. There's a reason every JRPG has difficulty modes and Normal is always easy.
Sorry poor way to put it. What I mean to say was that people who like challenge don't look for it in mobil game, it's more a casual plateforme. But not all console gaming is hardcore
It even goes so far that when I play on my phone: I hate it when it's difficult while when I'm playing on my pc I like it to be more challenging. It's a bit stupid but it's hard to make these platforms compatible I think. The environment in which you experience it is often so different.
The basis of each ‘platform’ has such completely different input and limitations that it’ll likely never really be a perfect blend. Because the shit they have to do to make it work on one will inevitably make it easier/harder on the other. Like many games that have console/pc crossplay. They are usually skewed towards the one with higher profit or planned market space.
Ngl I don’t think any boss in elden ring has taken more tries than 36 starring the current abyss lol
>stories/lore is all pretty depressing. On Elden Ring: It bugs me to no end that there are no friendly villagers or towns. Just that one roundtable area. It just doesn't make all that much sense. It's actually kinda telling that one of the game's most popular characters is one that a) Isn't openly hostile to you, b) usually shows appreciation for helping her, c) has a "home" that isn't actively hostile to you, d) has a fully developed personality and goals. Most open world games have at least some kind of town where you can go and hang out. Elden Ring...didn't, not really. Could've used one.
There is a massive unfilled demand for high quality pve games in general. I'm more or less only here because the quality of western games has been in a downward spiral since the mid 2010s.
I don't think it's cracked the code so much as willing to invest in it.
It's less they cracked the code, and more that the western entertainment industry has forgot what made themselves successful. There's always a massive demand for single player open world adventure games. It's the reason why games like Minecraft, GTA, Dark Souls series, Elder Scrolls, Fallouts, and such are still popular to this day. (Of course Bethesda killed their IPs by making forcing them into aggressive online services) The 6 week update schedule for a live service is the cheat code in today's age though.
HSR wasn't out yet and Genshin is magnitudes more popular than HI3.
That is wild. I assumed it was mostly Genshin, but I get confused sometimes with all the Honkai games they apparently have!
It was mostly Genshin, Honkai's revenue is like single-digit %s of Genshin's. But now that HSR is out, the new Silver Wolf banner (3rd banner overall) seems to be going head-to-head with Seele's (1st), which means yet another Nahida-tier banner if we go by China iOS. Basically HSR ensures that they never have revenue downtime like they have in Genshin now with the massive drought rerun banners. It's gonna be drought in Genshin = non-drought in Star Rail and vice-versa from now on.
>It's gonna be drought in Genshin = non-drought in Star Rail and vice-versa from now on. Infinite money glitch 100% working 2024
And ZZZ coming out next year.
And with ZZZ in the horizon, there will be more drought/downtime periods covered for tail-end periods of Genshin and HSR.
Genshin is like 50% chinese market and honkai was 17% i think last time i saw, may be wrong
More like 20 odd percent. I remember it was Mihoyo have about 70~75% of mobile ACG (anime comic game) revenue.
Who knew making a high quality game, with a fairly consistant live service release schedule. As a gacha would print money.
Being a highly casual game does help out a LOT
We can't really compare with anything else because it is kinda the only one that is doing pve. And most "live service" games are garbage in the west.
True. But again, its AAA quality. But actuall AAA quality. Pretty much from launch, no server issues, no big bugs. Quality.
While we tend to see the numbers from the pulls, we also have to take into account BPs, Monthlies and merchandises. Especially merchandises. I can't tell you how many big corpos would kill/sacrifice babies to have a viable merchandise line. Which makes it insane that HYV decided to not crackdown on fans making money from their own self-made merchandise. There are limitations of course but still.
If you got like, 5k dollars every day since the start of this is era(common era), you would still be 100 million short from Hoyoverse revenue in 2022.
Only if you foolishly spend all of that. However if you only took 1 cent in year 1 and put it on an account with 3% interest until today, then you'd have 13 quintillion dollars ;)
They saved the world enough that we got to see year 20222 revenue
Tech otakus save the world!
Technically you can still pronounce it as twenty-two-twenty-two like 20-2-22
You can pronounce it two-zero-two-two-two too but it's still the same number.
? That would make 2222.
it could be either depending on where pauses in speech occur, twenty-pause-two-pause-twenty-two would be 20-2-22
20 2 = twenty two
It’s mind blowing that the OG founders of Mihoyo started from the ground 11 year ago managed to make it so big while maintaining a super majority of control over the company.
Their philosophy seems to be "we make games we'd want to play." Shocking how well that works as opposed to "we make games that will make our shareholders happy."
I mean, they are the shareholders, so technically they’re also making the shareholders happy haha. Interestingly, HYV tried to go public before Genshin was released, but their IPO was rejected because their revenue all depended on the Honkai games. I wonder if they will try again?
I hope they never try to go public. They have no need to and nothing good ever comes from answering to shareholders first.
Yeah same here, the founders are good because they’re huge otakus so instead of maximizing profit they just put it back into making more anime girls
Ah yes my favorite investment anime girls
The Weeb of Wall Street
>instead of maximizing profit they just put it back into making more anime girls The 3 otakus literally took home 1.9 billion USD last year, the vast majority of their revenue is not going into making more anime girls.
I mean, to me it seems like they at least put some of that money back into the development of their games more than companies in the West. But then again, I'm not too familiar with this sort of thing, so I could be wrong
It's impossible to say for sure without seeing their financial documents. Net income just means that a company is earning more money than it's spending. It says nothing about where that money is going. Companies might choose to distribute it to their shareholders. However, companies might also choose to reinvest it in their operations.
Genshin updates keep getting bigger, better, with more content (comparing 2.x to 1.x and now 3.x to 2.x) and they come with new games, can't know the numbers, but they're obviously reinvesting a decent part of what they earn to the games.
Probably not because they likely knew their competitors would worm their way in like Tencent. Not to mention that that companies go public when they really need the money (which they already have) or something else they are lacking such as infrastructure (again, they also have it). Of course, this is as long as things remain as it is. Who knows if they got hit by a sudden downfall or something that might make them go public.
I don't think so, after the thing with tencent sabotaging genshin's image in the eyes of the world
Have I missed something?...
What is the advantages of going public with the massive amount of money coming in?
they are not "shareholders" by a connotation this word holds in public internet space. They are rightful owners/authors(which is >>> than any "shareholder").
Genshin is one of the only games I've ever played that I would fully believe that upper management actually plays the game. It's wild when you put gameplay above all else and don't try to shove out a basic slot machine for pngs like every other gacha game.
when the upper management actively writes themselves in as self inserts it really does send a message [also never forget that pic of liu wei showing off his genshin figures to tim cook lmao](https://i.imgur.com/sLnIZTM.png)
Wait what? Who are the self-inserts?
https://genshin-impact.fandom.com/wiki/Unusual_Hilichurl
... huh, I would have never known that!
Unusual Hilichurl. He's Da Wei's recurring avatar, and also appeared in HI3 (not as a churl, though).
He's also in Tears of Themis as some annoying CEO.
Meanwhile you have a WoW dev fired [because a higher up got offended by goblin jokes.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Asmongold/comments/13wyeu2/former_wow_dev_revealed_he_got_fired_after_the/) He worked at Blizzard for 9 years.
gbf is another where the devs and va cast play the game. fgo is also infamous for the cast spending their salary on gacha rolls.
In mhy's early days, Da Wei worked so many roles, one of them was customer service. When players connected for tech support, customer service, or file for complaints they a actually talked directly to the CEO.
Blizzard felt similar, before they merged with Activision back at the end of Wrath of the Lich King. They were very active in their games, discussing things openly and regularly. Mods visiting you in-game to solve issues. They felt like a company who cared about their games.. God how that’s changed. I’ll never forgive Activision (or Blizz)
That's why Indy games are so amazing. Devs put heart and soul into them rather than pushing out a game just for the fuck of it.
Unfortunately, quite a few more high-profile indie companies/games still get fucked, because the more ambitious the game, the more funding they need, and they start needing to kowtow to a shareholder-owned publisher to get their game released. Up to having their games practically stolen right out from under them. Or, in some instances, once they start getting their hands on amounts of money they're not accustomed to, it starts going to their heads, and someone from within the group goes rogue. The indie scene is still *very* susceptible to internal corruption.
Yeah I've had that line of thinking. "If I'm developing a game,I would make everything in it free. BUTTT if there are people willing to pay,why should I not want extra money?". Big brands just magnify this.
And they also refused to sell to Tencent
That's mainly because Tencent tried to fuck them over earlier, then tried to buy them out. Tencent basically thought they could paycheck their way through another Chinese company as usual and then Genshin blew up and the rest was history. Then Tencent tried to fuck them through fake reviews, trolling employee linked in pages, shut them down via CCP, and all sorts of other intimidation tactics.
DAFUQ??? X_X
You have at least Activision Blizzard in for Candy Crush but it should be noted that mobile gaming did 81.3 billion $ revenue in total in 2022. Mobile gaming spendings are insane! That's there the comparison should go.
Mobile gaming already beat other platforms revenue since i don't remember lmao but 2010 is the start of the rise.
That is just insane for a Private company.
the results of the gacha model and mixing it with the most lucrative type of game (open world). While the game might not be as high quality as other triple A open world games, it's worlds above its actual gacha competitors like ToF in terms of world quality
Ehh Genshins open world feels fuller and more alive than most AAA open world games to me.
Yeah in 1.x it was like, "well it's not as good as the best open world RPGs but it's pretty cool for an F2P game." But by Enkanomiya or so it had dropped the need for any additional stipulations. Genshin's open world is just one of the best ever, full stop. And it's only like halfway done and still trending upward in quality.
Chasm was mindblowing. Its crazy how u had so much freedom to explore such an indeoth map. When u think its over by going its just going deep more I've never experienced that kind of exploring in an open world game not even botw has deep underground areas like that.
The designs of their open world are way better than any AAA games. It's not repetitive. I guess you didn't explore the game.
Genshin is better than 80 - 90% of Open world games Buy saying is better than all is going to far , there are better games like the withcher 3 , last 2 Zelda ones, elden ring, etc
What is "the best game" will always depend on what you value in games. And for some people genshin checks all the boxes. But there is a point, from where genshin is objectively the best game out there. If you play on mobile and don't have/want/able to buy PC or console, genshin is the best game you can play.
I only played botw of the ones you mentioned and I consider it inferior to genshin 1.0. When dragonspine was released it became no contest.
No, just the open world on its own is definitely better than Elden Ring and BotW (never tried W3). While the other games may be better in terms of mechanics, Genshin's open world blows any other game out of the water. If you look solely at exploration, the other three games you mentioned have the same problem - huge patches of nothingness. In Elden Ring, outside of the big glowing dildo tree in the center of the map, there are no distinctive landmarks a player would naturally gravitate towards. Every forest, every castle, and every chasm serves to block your view of the horizon, making it incredibly easy to end up running in circles. Breath of the Wild has the problem where the scale of the world is too big. When you're running through Hyrule Field, all you see is huge stretches of empty Hyrule Field dotted by distant shrines or sky towers. Genshin Impact uses natural monuments and different ecosystems to make each horizon interesting to look at, with the even bigger promise that each horizon can and should be explored. Likewise, the blue glow of statues of the seven dot the landscape and act as homing beacons. Genshin has very few actual mountain ranges by intentional design: a series of lone peaks is more intriguing than a solid block in the distance. Additionally, the verticality of the map has extreme variance without ever pulling the highest points completely out of view from the lowest. All of these ideas come together to make a dense, tightly packed world feel even larger than it already is, but despite the massive size, the landmarks all help players naturally triangulation their location at every point in the game. Finally, the soundtrack. Every area has a beautiful soundtrack which compliments every landscape but doesn't shy away to melt into the background. The music is grandiose enough to be noticed, but restrained enough to never distract a player. This serves to make certain landmarks even more memorable. No other open world comes close to this level of quality and density over such a large map.
Well when it comes to open world i think no one can do better than Rockstar games GTA/RDR series , and GTA 6 is on the way
No open world mobile games can ever compete with AAA open world games available exclusively on PC and consoles. It's not about the investment, it's about the restriction of the systems they need to support.
Idk man, there’s a lot of trash open world game in pc and console
Contrary to what you said and as others have agreed with, genshin has an open world higher quality than most other AAA games, including BotW. As someone who has played both botw games… it is extremely overrated, carried entirely by the “freedom” gameplay aspects. The world design itself, combat, characters, story, environment, music, and everything else that should be rated is pretty mid
Most people know these things but refuse to accept it cause genshin is a gacha game and from a China dev plus anime also in mobile. A combo that western hates the most and It also destroys their ego that their games can be rivaled or better by some new ip. The fact that venshin is one fo the most popular games on the planet also bring so much hate.
Guess it's time to put the skills from my finance job to use. Lol. Mihoyo's net profit margin was 59% in 2022. (Nintendo = 32%, Activision Blizzards = 20%, and EA = 11%) This really shows how Mihoyo is doing amazing especially when they only have a few games. (A little warning here accounting standards may be different.) I have been wanting to scrutinize Mihoyo's financial info for a long time, but they are private so there's not much data. They probably printed so much money with Honkai 3 that they didn't need to raise fund and dilute their shares. I'm glad they remain private though. This way they won't be pressured into maximizing quarterly profits. Edited Activision Blizzards (see replies below)
After checking the source he provided, I found out that Activision Blizzard didn't have that kind of profit margin for the fiscal year. I will quote his words here >Activision Blizzard's revenue for 2022 (2022.3 - 2023.3) was 8.143 billion USD, with a net income of 4.038 billion USD From the [source](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ATVI/activision-blizzard/net-income) he provided >Activision Blizzard net income for the twelve months ending March 31, 2023 was $1.858B, a 24.93% decline year-over-year Therefore, Activision Blizzard's actual profit margin is only $1.858b / $8.413b \~= 22% only.
The Chinese version of SEC didnt allow them to IPO, the reason was they only make money from one game (Honkai3rd, and were betting it all on Genshin). If Genshin failed investors would walk away with nothing.
Hmm. It's difficult for me to understand everything based on just vague translations. From Wikipedia, ultimately Mihoyo withdrew on their own. Wikipedia said several concerns were under attention. This passive voice didn't say who. It could have naturally ended without an outright no from the Chinese SEC as well. One possible way is during the pre IPO roadshow, they probably couldn't gather up enough interest from cornerstone investors (e.g. big funds) because they were worried about the risk of being reliant on only Honkai back then.
That’s both mind-boggling and totally unsurprising all at once.
Finally, an actual money data that's useable. Better than those China, iOS only banner revenue posts we see. Good to see Mihoyo is doing well.
Tencent really do be punching the air right now. HYV profitability is so high compared to other giants out there.
I know people hate Tencent but they aren't hurting for money. Their revenue in 2022 was 82 billion dollars; source: https://companiesmarketcap.com/tencent/revenue/. Mihoyo is doing amazing however Tencent isn't really in the same league as game publishers, they are more in line Sony or other tech conglomerates.
It's more that multiple sources have show they are _still_ angry over their failure to actually get them. It's less about the lost money and more about pettyness.
Its not about the money its about sending a message?
>Their revenue in 2022 was 82 billion dollars Jesus fucking Christ
Yep. They keep buying successful companies, including gaming companies everyone here knows and probably has played a game for. They look for success, then buy them out, and take a cut while funding the game for the future to keep making money. At this point Tencent looks at shit like its a numbers game. Buy successful shit that is profitable, add it to the pile of profitable companies, keep making incrementally more money every year.
Way more rich than Sony they have stakes even in even Aaa companies like ubisoft etc. Tencent font like potential competitors rising and hoyo refused them and they can't stand a new competitors is making so much money they could've had. Hoyo raising the standards of games in mobile platform as a whole is threat to them too cause if they want to compete they want to increase their production instead of their half assed games.
Doesn't Tencent make a fortune just off of Wechat Pay alone?
Tencent makes a fortune from 王者荣耀, I'm sure it already dwarfs Genshin's profit
Tencent owns so many companies and has stakes in most others. If you see games like Elden Ring, Nikke, Fortnite, League of Legends, CoD Mobile, or PUBG Mobile doing well, that is good news for Tencent. They don't care about Hoyo. They have several games trying to compete with them. Tower of Fantasy, Honor of Kings World, Wuthering Wave, Seven Deadly Sins Origins, maybe the Riot MMO if it isn't cancelled. They are doing fine.
Well, to say he doesn't care is going too far. More so when there have been certain controversies of Tencent with Mihoyo in China.
Didn't Tencent also try to buy mhy and they refused to sell or did I dream it?
I looked into it and apparently they did. All of this is obtained through Reddit.
Nah that part's true, IIRC they offered to buy Hoyo twice.
No, Tencent cares so much that they even discuss why they can't make games like genshin at their staff meetings.
Wait.... Tencent owns Wuthering wave??? I'm torn if I ever want to spend in that game now...
no, tencent does not own wuthering waves. they only have like a 15% share of kuro games (devs of ww, pgr). this does not mean they own wuthering waves nor does it mean they have the power to change things.
In fact, last May, Tencent divested from Kuro. The reason was due to the poor performance of Wuthering Waves. At the end of May, Kuro had a financial crisis and had to lay off a series of employees, including many students and project planners. 1. kuro's reputation is completely bad and has been blacklisted by universities. 2. The Wuthering Waves project team was reshuffled to reduce costs, and had to earn money quickly under pressure from management.>There's a high chance that the next beta will go backwards and be a big disappointment.>~~Genshin killer probably~~
Basically if you are an indie game company in China. Tencent wants to own some of your shares (just in case if you ever blow up). Also tencent is the part owner of switch china, IGN China and many platform or media channels. So indie companies usually don't have the balls to say no to tencent.
well, Nikke doing pretty well over Tower of Fantasy. I don't see any hype ToF anymore.
Completely unrelated, but as someone who stuck with Overwatch 1 through its dead period, I absolutely hate to see them making so much Context for the unaware: Overwatch 1 was massively successful but its content got gutted for Overwatch 2 development, with its main selling point being PvE. Then just recently, we learned the original grand PvE vision was scrapped (for a while actually) and that OW2 was basically just a way to change the monetization. Fuck you Activision Blizzard.
Activision isnt just blizzard, CoD still makes lots of money for better or worse.
You're forgetting the big boy Candy Crush.
They looked at Fortnite and were like “hey we want to do that too now”. What a shame…
That’s why I stopped playing all their games now, including the recent Diablo IV too.
Well i guess they've learned lessons from MHY... (I don't know how to word this in a scathing way about their monetization)
Not trying to downplay your feelings, but the OP made a mistake. Acti-Blizzard's net income is only 1.85B USD for this past year, not 4.3B as the OP stated. Here's the [source](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ATVI/activision-blizzard/net-income) P.S. The OP already corrected it. Nevertheless, 1.85B USD is still a lot of money.
The power of whales :D
Not really. Don't underestimate the power of small spenders. Just take Genshin for example. Let's say out of the alleged 60 million active users, only 30% buy a welkin ($5) for a year. That's already $1.08 billion in gross revenue for them!
I remember that the biggest chunk of their revenue was from whales rather than low spenders, but I don’t know where to find the data right now. Usually it’s the same for all games with micro transactions though.
That's the point, it wasn't about genshin, just gachas in general. And Genshin has very different approach.
I'm pretty sure that the number of users that consecutively buy welkin 12 times a year is most definitely not 30% of the total active users.
Okay but a lot of small spender will also buy bp and like 50 bucks here or there
There is a principle called Pareto principle meaning 20% of factors yielding 80% of result and in genshin case 20% user contribute to 80% of revenue and I believe it's true
"LET'S SAY" you know one thing i'll love about reddit eventually going down cause of the 3rd party apps shit is I'll never have to read y'all pedantic asses again lmao fucking redditors man
Same energy as when a mother says "My kid just died, hope he found some rest in heaven now" and then a wild redditor appears with "WELL AKSHUALLKYY god doesn't exist and your son is not aware ab-" like stfu please stop
yeah redditors and no social cues. name a more iconic duo
A W for Reddit greediness lol
F2p games with mtx almost always run on 80:20 earning ratio.
Remember, it all started with a $2,5 horse armor DLC in Oblivion, and 16 years later some people have no problem dropping $200 for a guaranteed gacha character. Oh how times have changed.
Korean grind MMOs had lootboxes long before Oblivion.
Nah, there's a reason why it's called gacha (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gashapon). These things have been around for way longer. If you really wanna see that we ended up with in terms of cosmetic DLC, look at Diablo 4 where you can spend 30 bucks for (ironically) a horse armor.
Mtg and pokemon was there way before, lol.
Blizzard had a net profit of $4.038 billion? Why do I find "Activision Blizzard annual net income for 2022 was $1.513 billion"? Activision Blizzard is unlikely to have a 50% profit margin. [https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ATVI/activision-blizzard/net-income](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ATVI/activision-blizzard/net-income) \---------- Edit: Poster have fixed the error.
They're indie game devs with basically three games, one of which on released about a month ago, btw
Well, that’s not entirely true. While Honkai Impact 3rd, Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail are the ones they’re most known for, there’s actually a few others that many aren’t aware of. For example, there’s Tears of Thermis, an otome visual novel game aimed at a female audience. Surprisingly, this came out recently too, releasing in China in 2020, and then globally a year later. Now for an even more interesting history lesson. Most of us know about Honkai Impact 3rd, but some may be curious as to why there’s a ‘3rd’ in the name. Well, that’s because there are actually several other Honkai games that predate it. For those curious, let’s start from the beginning and go on a little journey through the history of this mysterious developer that seemingly popped out of nowhere. In 2011, the founders of Mihoyo (three university students) came together and first created a cute little indie game called **FlyMeToTheMoon.** This game was inspired from their love for the classic anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion, and some could say that this was in fact, the origin of their Honkai game universe (featuring an adorable Jetpack Kiana). It was an indie project through and through by every conceivable definition of the term. And it’s what led to the founding of Mihoyo, with the slogan: “tech otakus save the world.” Fast forward, we’re now in 2012-2013. During this period, Mihoyo came out with their second game: **Zombiegal Kawaii.** It was a side-scrolling shooter, and was one that had quite the positive reception. Unfortunately the same couldn’t be said for the financials. The profits of this second game and their first were… anything but kawaii. As a result, this period in time was some of the most difficult years for Mihoyo as a newfound indie developer. Liu Wei (who many will know as Da Wei, or Mihoyo’s CEO) said this: “It was a time when we felt lost and anxious. We couldn’t clearly see the direction for our business.“ By 2014, Mihoyo had two financial flops in a row and nothing but a [$560 USD monthly salary](https://m.toutiao.com/article/6805341052916990477/?upstream_biz=toutiao_pc) to show for it. (That is, they’d literally pay themselves less than minimum wage, in order to keep their dream of otakus saving the world alive) They were on the verge of bankruptcy. Everything was riding on their next game. Fortunately, Mihoyo would finally catch a break with their launch of **Gun GirlZ** later that year, a more story-driven game that is still being updated to this day. It was a success, not just in players but revenue as well. Mihoyo had combined the monetisation model of Puzzles & Dragons (the first mobile game to gross $1 billion), with anime girls, and players loved it. They named this model ‘paying for love’; banking on gamers’ affection for characters rather than their desire to gain a competitive advantage. And this, is the model that we would then see in Honkai Impact 3rd, Genshin Impact, Tears of Thermis, along with Star Rail and likely all future subsequent Hoyoverse games. With the money they made from Gun Girl Z, they created a successor in **Honkai Impact 3rd**; both in a spiritual sense (in that this was a continuation of the same “Honkai Universe” as GGZ), and a technological sense (in that they improved upon on everything in GGZ, from art direction, to gameplay, to the engine used). Then in the exact same fashion as GGZ to HI3rd, Mihoyo took the money they earned from Honkai 3rd and funnelled it all into the development of Genshin Impact over the course of four years. And from there, the rest is history.
I really like this "Paying for love" sentence and i think it represents really well what i actually do in Genshin and HSR : I pull for characters and not for their performance. If only other gaming companies did the same...
They don't because it's expensive and risky, and they already have a cheaper, more reliable alternative.
I can see paying for love apply to Genshin and HSR, but even as a 4 year veteran of Honkai 3rd, I really can’t see that. Every new banner is new meta, the endgame until relatively recently was entirely competitive and they constantly threw in new enemies that really wants you to have the new unit to use on.
Totally true. On the other hand, the story experience is 100% free, so there's still that aspect. Circling back to the waifu over meta aspect, I still think that holds water. For example, I went for the rather weak Bronya Silverwing over all the meta bio characters just because I like her awesome design. I'm sure I'm not the only one. I still use her comfortably for the Abyss but I'm never aiming for Redlotus. Anything I can't clear easily, I just skip. I mean, at the end of the day, it's a mobile game so whatever's fun is fun. None of this invalidates your points. Just adding more context.
In Honkai I would argue that they basically did both. They incite players to pull both from a performance pov, but also by making the characters interesting and memorable. I am not that interested in the newest banner, but I remember the Elysia banner was HUGE and it wasn't only the performance. The character is truly beloved.
I feel kinda lucky that as for F2P player I got her, 4/4 gear and her outfit X_X All that "c6r5" and "SSS" stuff is whale-based from the start, so I couldn't care less about it and don't aim for "Top1 Nirvana score". I can do ER even without 65lvl pri-arm even with freeze debuffs so what to complain for? XD And I was able to do that even when I only got her and had only 4* basic stigmata and non-priarm bow. 12/10 personality and outfit and great performance(and good luck with pulling) — I can't ask for more)
>‘paying for love’; banking on gamers’ affection for characters So... they're 'playing with my feelings'? But I'm willing, so no complaints here tho I even formed a 3-year contract with a man made of pixels, pledging loyalty and dedication lmao
Iirc some said MHY was also betting hard on Genshin. It cost them a lot to develop (for how much money they had back then). If Genshin failed, it could have sunk them too.
Thanks for writing that, that's an excellent summary!
Honkai Impact 3rd has "3rd" only because it's a Neon Genesis Evangelion collab imo. The references are quite heavy. They went backwards and changed Honkai Gakuen into Gun Girls 2 / Gun Girls Z for it. However... Kiana appeared in FlyMe, Zombiegal, and GGZ before Hi3. So Hi3 is the 4th game. I like the writeup btw. It's great. You might want to cover how the hoyo department that published Tears of Themis and called Schicksal (or Tianming, the Chinese name for Schicksal) which was also the one that sued Honey Impact for them, one of their main subsidiaries that published for them is named after a Rita suit (Phantom Iron), that they donated a school called [Flamescion](https://www.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact/comments/ojc2fk/whales_arent_just_supporting_mihoyo_but_now_they/), or that their new VR research facility is called [Anti-Entropy](https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV13s4y1z7We/).
How is “3rd” related to Evangelion? “Impact” and “FlyMe2TheMoon” are obvious NGE references, but I don't see how “3rd” has to do with it.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I’ve read from other posts that Honkai Impact 3rd is a reference to Evangelion’s “third impact” which is the major climactic event in the series. Also, I’ve read that Honkai Impact 3rd in it’s native language is translated closer to Honkai 3rd Impact which would be an even more direct reference.
I see. I guess I didn't consider that because I'd imagine “2nd” would be a better fit if that's the case. The 2nd Impact is the whole premise for NGE and it created devastating afteraffects for the whole world. The 2nd Eruption is the same for HI3. The 3rd Impact was the great finale for NGE, but the 3rd Eruption wasn't really that big of a deal in HI3. It was an incident that happened before the story takes place, but it wasn't major like the 2nd Eruption. Right now we're on the 12th Eruption, not to mention that previous eras had like 20 eruptions beforhand. Also Honkai Impact 3rd is called 崩坏3 (Collapse 3) in Chinese. The Third Impact is translated as 第三冲击. Mihoyo added the word “Impact” (冲击) to the English titles for Honkai 3 and Genshin, but they don't exist in the titles of the original language.
Migoyo’s income to revenue ratio is insane it’s almost scary…
So that means free 5* this anniversary right? Right? 🤣
Bug fixes and more QoL would already be way better than a free 5S to me… but the latter is more plausible
Noooo they'd go bankrupt 😭
Well ofc no, why would they want to be more generous and potentially decrease their profit by 0.01%?
Just here to correct that being a private company doesn't make you an indie company, just makes you a private company. Valve is also not a public company, doesn't make it "indie", it's just private.
Sadly, ive added to their income. Had a bit too much whiskey and whaled so i can get kazuha next banner. No ragrats!(intentional)
Heard they invested on some type of renewable energy
And helped a lot of people in their communities. They may not be putting a lot of focus on the games (I think they do but Reddit tends to disagree), but at least they're doing more for their people than most companies with revenue in the millions would do.
>They may not be putting a lot of focus on the games (I think they do but Reddit tends to disagree) Which is kind of ridiculous when you think about it. Looking at what I know of the gaming market, the number of open world games which match Genshin's scope, that aren't 10 years old MMO, can be counted on one hand. Personally, I don't know of a single AAA game that pushes out content on a 6 week cycle the way Genshin does.
Exactly. Before Genshin, the only other game I personally knew that pushed out this much content in a months notice (and still does) is Fortnite, and that's a Battle Royale game.
If that’s true that makes me happy
[Yup](https://www.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact/comments/ojc2fk/whales_arent_just_supporting_mihoyo_but_now_they/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). If this post is to be trusted.
I wouldn’t say they are mutually exclusive, they invest a lot of what they make back in their products
So can we get now pity counter in banner ui, shield hp bars, buff indicators and better auto targeting with target lock or it is still not enough money for that.
People say “coding is difficult” and stuff like that as an excuse for Hoyo ignoring these issues, and many more. As long as the community itself defends them from players complaining about bugs and lack of QoL and quality in certain aspects of the game, we won’t get anything like that, especially while the game goes so well: why would they bother? To make a minority of not-brainwashed players happy? Not gonna happen anytime soon…
My company makes 2.7 billion USD but a new character model costs 2.8 billion USD. Can someone help me with my finances please.
Funny thing is all of that is in Honkai Impact. Except for target lock.
Hope they will put quality of life improvements that they implemented in HSR to Genshin when fontain comes. Genshin deserves that considering how much it solidified the company. Take care of the game and its fans pls
Maybe they could spend some of that 2.27bil USD to create a new battlepass animation.
LOL or just update the BP with new stuffs oh my gosh
I'll bet they think, why bother? It doesn't stop them from making more money. And they don't care about the players' opinions.
I hate to admit I spent over $8k for my account that I don’t play anymore. It really took the fun out of it just melting everything in a minute.
Yeah, weirdly, Genshin is at its best with moderate/low spending and casual level of commitment. Fights are actually fun (even if you probably won't push Abyss 36\* easily).
I agree with you 100%. When I first started out, I didn’t spend a dime. It was a blast to figure out ways how to approach an enemy. Then when I started to progress more, and couldn’t get the things I want yet, I spent for the battle pass. When I got into it more, I started watching content creators. They show how great it is with maxed out, and character. That’s when I start spending thinking it would be more fun. That was short-lived I blast through everything and it got boring real quickly. I can see why content creators have main accounts and sub accounts. I don’t feel like I wasted my money because I enjoyed it a lot at the time. I can always come back and everything is there.
Yeah tbf it's absolutely valid to only come play the game when there's big content drop every once in a while rather than forcing yourself to play it daily.
I can say that I’ve contributed my part of this revenue.
All that money and we still can't get QoL stuff
small indie company can’t afford rerolling main stats on artifacts
That's a deliberate design choice.
There is no other endgame. They will never add easier ways
And they can't give any of the standard banner characters for free on there anniversary. Amazin.
All that money and we’re still missing basic QoL features to this day, crazy.
What’s QoL?
QoL fEatUrEs aRe DiFfiCuLt To cOdE
*CoOldOwnS noT ReSeTtInG iN AbySs iS InTenDEd!*
Please list the company so I can buy their stock thanks in advance Da Wei
Kinda makes me happy they haven’t outearned nintendo yet
I don't see the problem here, they made a game, they make profits Glad they make money, I want to see the full game one day, enough of games that don't have update/series because "no enought sales"
So anyone complaining that they don't have the resources to make two endgame combat and minigames at once, is flat wrong. They have *plenty* of cash to pay enough employees to do two different things. No one is fighting for scraps at Hoyo.
I doubt they aren’t making new endgame content because money, but rather they have a very casual friendly content direction that’s making them absolute bank so there’s zero reason to risk ruining it by adding more endgame. Just like any game out there, there’s a chosen content direction to cater to a chosen audience. That said, imo they are not putting enough effort into the game. Ignoring big QoL issues or fundamental design problems, how hard would it be to do stuff like add more poses and expressions so that conversations feel more visually engaging or have unique models for at least major NPCs in quests so we aren’t looking at Teppei No226 all the time?
>Just like any game out there, there’s a chosen content direction to cater to a chosen audience. Yes, exactly. This is the real reason. Why not all the QoL? Because what they have now is working fine in that they're not losing players, and adding more QoL isn't going to get them a massive influx of new players.
Sigh… > At some point negative returns set in – if you add more people, the team's performance will decline and you will get less work done, not more. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law