Title: The King’s Gambit of a Domestic Mobile Game, How is Genshin Impact Performing Another Year?
When discussing the revenue of domestic mobile games, Genshin Impact is an inescapable topic. According to market estimates, Genshin Impact earned nearly 36 billion RMB in revenue within its first year of release, making it a standout highlight in the domestic mobile game market.
As another year passes, how is Genshin Impact performing? Can it maintain the same level of performance as its first year?
Annual Revenue Estimated at 3.04 Billion RMB, Second Year Heat Continues to Rise
Based on data from SevenMile and GenshinLab, the total revenue of Genshin Impact on the iOS platform for its second year is approximately 1 billion USD. Assuming that Android revenue is 1.4 times that of iOS, along with PC and console versions, the total revenue for the second year in China is estimated at around 3 billion USD.
Due to MiHoYo’s private placement and lack of publicly available financial statements, accurately verifying the total revenue of Genshin Impact is challenging. Here, data from a Bilibili UP user, “Observation of Domestic Anime Mobile Games,” indicates that the total revenue of Genshin Impact for the second year is around 30.4 billion RMB, or approximately 4.2 billion USD, which is consistent with the company’s global market share of around 30% last year.
Given the significant error in valuation, it can be inferred that the revenue for the second year should be roughly the same as the first year, which is also reflected in the game’s popularity.
Google Trends shows that the average search index for Genshin Impact in its first year was 47.25, rising to 67.13 in its second year, indicating a steady increase in popularity over the two years.
Furthermore, according to the rankings released by data.ai, in 2022, MiHoYo not only ranked second in global revenue among overseas games but also topped the list for revenue growth, proving that Genshin Impact truly has become MiHoYo’s primary money-making machine.
Unveiling the Role Streams, Suzaku Takes the Lead, Fish Version Lags Behind
The game’s robust revenue can be attributed to the captivating charm of its characters, as “buying love” is the driving force behind spending. However, which character is the most popular among players?
According to GenshinLab’s statistics, during the two years since the game’s launch, Suzaku Linhua, with a revenue of 36 million USD (based solely on iOS data), has set a record for a single character pool. Even popular characters like Zhongli and Carol lag far behind.
In terms of total revenue, it’s Princess Raijin who leads. Given that the re-release pools for Raijin and Xiong Hǎi were released simultaneously, the final revenue is expected to exceed 60 million USD (based on iOS data alone). This solidifies Raijin’s position as the character with the strongest stream of revenue.
Interestingly, despite the high revenue, the water element character, Xiong Hǎi, is the one with the lowest stream of revenue. According to the previous calculation, the revenue from Xiong Hǎi’s re-release pool is only 5.8 million USD, which is still a significant amount. The second re-release pool for Gongyi (公子) only managed to achieve a revenue of 7.7 million USD, making it seem like they’re being overly generous with three re-releases.
Continual Investment in Production, See How Genshin Impact Spends Money
Following the usual pattern of domestic game companies, once a game starts making money, they quickly extract every last penny from players and either invest in developing the next game or abandon the company. However, MiHoYo chose a different path, reinvesting the money they earned back into production and various activities, as if they were not even involved in making money.
To be precise, the development team for Genshin Impact was initially composed of 400 people and invested approximately 100 million USD in development. According to rumors, the current team size has exceeded 1,000 people, and the ongoing development costs for version 3.0 have exceeded