Genshin Impact is a free-to-play cross-platform action RPG. On mobile, Genshin Impact is particularly popular in Japan, where players generated an average revenue per download of 96.02 U.S. dollars. Singapore ranked second, with a cumulative RPD of 64.27 U.S. dollars. Genshin Impact – a free-to-play success story With an annual IAP revenue of 1.56 billion U.S. dollars, Genshin Impact is one of the highest-grossing mobile games of 2023. The game was released in September 2020 and initial reviews were mixed, describing the setting and theme as a clone of Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. However, this stance was quickly abandoned by critics as Genshin Impact came into its own. The game features regular content releases to keep the player engaged as the story continues to evolve and new characters and regions are revealed. In August 2024, Genshin Impact launched the content update 5.0 which featured the new Natlan region and several new characters, quests, and in-game events. Genshin Impact is a live service game, also known as the Games-as-a-Service (GaaS), which is one of the strongest-growing revenue models in gaming right now. Gacha monetization mechanics In addition to the live service model, Genshin Impact is also a successful example of the gacha monetization trend in mobile games. Similar to loot boxes, a gacha system leads the player to spend in-game currency to receive random in-game items. In Genshin Impact, the gacha system is implemented via several so-called banners featuring characters or weapons which only are available for a limited amount of time. Spending in-game currency on these banners is the main way of unlocking new characters in the game. Players can earn the necessary currency either via completing game quests or through purchases in the virtual item shop with real money.In October 2024, Genshin Impact’s monthly mobile app revenue amounted to 35 million U.S. dollars, with China, Japan, and the United States leading in terms of revenue.

In 2024, Shanghai-based gaming giant miHoYo generated approximately 1.3 billion U.S. dollars in IAP revenues. miHoYo's innovation and gaming excellence have solidified its position as a prominent Chinese game developer with a global reach. The company unveiled its global publishing subsidiary Cognosphere in February 2022. The new Chinese gaming star Founded in 2011 with a dedication to quality, miHoYo has been delivering visually stunning gaming experiences, attracting millions of players worldwide. Between 2020 and 2022, the company’s annual revenue increased by four folds. As of the time of writing, the game developer has released two role-playing game (RPG) hits, Genshin Impact (2020) and Honkai: Star Rail (2023). miHoYo's two blockbusters The company's flagship title, Genshin Impact, has not only earned critical acclaim but has also served as a financial juggernaut. Within the first six months of its release in 2020, the title achieved over one billion U.S. dollars in revenue. In April 2023, miHoYo released another cross-platform space fantasy game Honkai: Star Rail, generating over 30 million app downloads worldwide in five months. Intricate storytelling, captivating visual elements, and consistent updates are some of the elements which lead to miHoYo's success. With a track record of innovation and financial prowess, miHoYo's future in the gaming industry remains exceptionally promising.

Released on August 19, 2024, and selling 10 million copies within three days, Black Myth: Wukong is one of the fastest-selling video games of all time. Heralded as the Chinese video game industry's first AAA video game production, the title was released on PC and PS5 with an Xbox version following shortly. Black Myth: Wukong was published by Game Science, which is backed by Tencent Gaming, one of the biggest gaming companies in China and worldwide. Lifetime unit sales of Black Myth: Wukong are currently at 25 million units. A record-breaking game release After first teasing the game in 2020, the anticipation for Black Myth: Wukong was extremely high. The title made headlines when Game Science revealed that it would transition the game’s development to the newly released game engine Unreal 5, making it one of the first major titles to do so. This hype caused the game to top charts as soon as pre-orders became available in summer 2024. Apart from selling an unprecedented number of copies within just a few days, Black Myth: Wukong crushed the competition in terms of user engagement, setting records as the second-most played video games on Steam based on peak concurrent players. A week post release, Wukong claimed over 2.4 million peak concurrent users on PC, ranking only behind PUBG, which is even more impressive considering that PUBG is a free-to-play online multiplayer title. Most Black Myth: Wukong’s sales are domestic, based on the fact that the majority of the over half a million reviews on Steam are in Chinese. Additionally, Chinese gamers accounted for about a third of Steam audiences, with nearly 32 percent of Steam users having Simplified Chinese and another 1.2 percent using Traditional Chinese as the language for the PC gaming platform. China’s gaming industry is starting to take off internationally Despite being the biggest video gaming market worldwide based on revenue, the Chinese gaming industry has been hampered by a gaming console ban (which has now been lifted), as well as strict regulations regarding video game releases and gaming consumption among citizens. Some of these strict regulations have caused raised eyebrows during the release of Black Myth: Wukong, as gaming content creators and streamers revealed they had been sent a list of topics to avoid talking about while livestreaming the game. Despite these growing pains, the Chinese gaming industry has been gaining international traction in recent years. Limited to mobile or domestic releases for long, China is now known for leading the way in free-to-play action role-playing titles like Genshin Impact, which gave rise to an entire genre of anime-style open-world online games. There are several factors that play into the popularity of Black Myth: Wukong. One of the key factors of the action game’s success is the source material – the main character of Black Myth: Wukong is based on Sun Wukong, or the Monkey King, a key character in Journey to the West, a beloved piece of classic Chinese literature which has inspired hundreds of interpretations on TV shows, cartoons, movies, and other media adaptions. The cultural relevance of the topic can be regarded as a soft-power move to promote Chinese culture through media content, which is currently booming internationally as Chinese TV drama productions are also gaining more international popularity among Western audiences.