You folks hear of this game Genshin Impact? Pretty big deal. So big that it’s raked in over $1 billion (that’s three commas, people) in mobile revenue since it launched nearly six months ago on September 28.
The data, as usual, comes from industry analyst Sensor Tower, which found that Genshin Impact reached this lofty figure faster than any other game on the market. Even the behemoth that is Pokémon Go, with over $4 billion in revenue and counting, took nine months.
Before we get too celebratory, I should note that Genshin Impact is a gacha game. Essentially, users play the lottery to unlock new characters in its Breath of the Wild-style world. While the vast majority of people won’t spend a dime on these types of games, the genre relies on hooking “whales,” or big spenders, and bleeding them for all their worth. As such, those with an unhealthy proclivity for gambling tend to be the most common victims.
Naturally, Genshin Impact sees a huge boost in revenue whenever its developer, the Shanghai-based miHoYo, releases a new character. According to Sensor Tower, the game’s daily income averages around $5.8 million, but when the mysterious Zhongli was added to Genshin Impact on December 1, for instance, the studio took in a total of $15.5 million for the day. The arrivals of Ganyu, Xiao, and Hu Tao were met with similar spending fervor.
I don’t know what else to do with this information. That’s a buttload of money. Congratulations to miHoYo’s executives, who I’m sure are putting their wealth to good use and not just rolling it over into NFTs or fossil fuels or something.