18 ms·

Genshin Impact made more money in its first year than any other game

126 points by eunos 5y ago

PaulHoule 5y ago
It amuses me that Game Informer publishes something about Genshin Impact every month even though Gamestop, the parent company of Game Informer doesn't make a dime off it.
- garmaine 5y ago
  Should a magazine only write about stuff that directly profits it’s owners?
  - PaulHoule 5y ago
    No, but it's a case study for how Gamestop is getting written out of the script for games in the 2020s. I have been a fan of refurbished hardware and used games from Gamestop for a long time, but short of buying Valve it's hard to see what they can do to stay relevant.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mattnewton 5y ago
  I assume their main revenue is ads they run alongside the content, and so if people want to read genshin content and will do so alongside ads they are making money
- lapetitejort 5y ago
  Interesting. I searched on their website and couldn't find any premium currency that other games like Fortnite and NBA 2K sells. I wonder why they don't make it purchasable in stores, and how they made so much money without a physical aspect.
- TMWNN 5y ago
  My understanding is that Game Informer has always done a very good job of remaining editorially independent from its retail owner.
minimaxir 5y ago
Previous discussion on the gameplay/monetization mechanics of Genshin Impact (as there's a lot of misconceptions around them): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28177763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28177763
- mattnewton 5y ago
  I started to feel like I needed a spreadsheet to keep track of all the currencies and make sure characters were getting the right leveled gear and stopped immediately after that. It's very easy to talk yourself into the value you are getting when there are 3-4 levels of indirection between the actual dollars spent and the on game reward. I normally don't mind some level of "accounting" work in rpgs but the fact that the layers of currency could start with real dollars kinda made the whole experience feel like a trap to conceal the actual cost of playing the game a certain way. I think this is a very dark pattern.
rowanG077 5y ago
This makes me really, really depressed.
eunos 5y ago
I'm just surprised that Genshin impact beats company like Las Vegas sands and almost Bet365.
spywaregorilla 5y ago
I like playing gacha games when they're F2P friendly. It's a neat game mechanic. The resource conservation and gambling aspect is fun. But people who spend money on these games... are just so strange to me. The value of money spent is incredibly low. Genshin is one of the stingiest games. Yet on its recent first anniversary, people were surprised that they were, yet again, very stingy. The lack of self awareness of what they're playing on the gacha communities is so odd to me. I'm not super familiar with genshin specifically, but in a lot of these games, players don't really play the game. Like, they'll just lookup pre made team setups that allow them to win with no skill or input. This is the strangest thing to me. Why do people like just following along a game if they're not going to take any accountability. It's like the MMORPG grind of enjoying the numbers going up from yesteryear, but somehow, even one step further removed than before.
- itg 5y ago
  Some people will spend a few dollars here and there because they feel they got value from it due to the amount of time spent playing. Compare that to a $60 single player game that you complete in 20 hours and never touch again. Whales on the other hand I will never understand.
  - rjeli 5y ago
    In college I would pirate everything and think paying for in game items was stupid. Now I will happily spend $1-5 for a few hours of fun in a well balanced game, e.g. hearthstone. But when I tried to get into Genshin Impact I quickly gave up after realizing I would have to spend at least $50 if not hundreds to roll a good team, or just stick with a completely f2p grind (which I don’t have time for anymore).
    - Tijdreiziger 5y ago
      Isn't Hearthstone one of the most spendy games, though? I haven't touched it in a few years, but back then, if you wanted to have a deck with any sort of competitiveness, you'd have to spend €50-100 or more on packs every extension (2x/year).
devindotcom 5y ago
This is difficult to judge either way, since on one hand Genshin is a deplorable gacha-style addiction machine and the worst of what gaming has to offer. Gambling-powered GaaS is a pretty scary combo. But on the other, it's a fabulously beautiful and well crafted open world with tons of things to do and explore, offered completely for free, no strings attached. It's almost entirely single-player so there's no competitive pressure, money is only needed if you don't have enough in-game currency to snag a character you want. I've played happily on and off for months and only experimentally paid $5 to see if it was worth it. I have more characters and resources than I know what to do with and have had a great time. But the business model is definitely predatory on people who are willing to pay hundreds or thousands to score a character or optimal item. Of course we've seen that happen with in-app purchases of crystals and smurfberries for years. The model works, which is the best and worst you can say of it.
- scotty79 5y ago
  > But the business model is definitely predatory on people who are willing to pay hundreds or thousands to score a character or optimal item. At this point so many busnisses exploit unreasonableness of some of their customers. Aren't people being sold this season's handbag for few thousands of dollars exploited?
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    Nonfunctional Jewelry has been around has been around since prehistoric times.
    - wizzwizz4 5y ago
      And it was, generally, valued. Last year's handbag is worthless, but next year's handbag? Priceless.
      - skhr0680 5y ago
        Nike somehow managed to f**k up sewing a piece of canvas to a piece of rubber and now a $40 pair of Converse sneakers is functionally equivalent to or worse than a $10 knock off. The only value in those shoes is literally the brand name.
wodenokoto 5y ago
It seemed like Genshin went from zero to 100 in absolutely no time. Like they came out of nowhere, and suddenly all of reddit was full of fanart and they're making more money than anyother game. Are there any good articles on how the game started, how it got funded and built its now enormous fanbase?
- minimaxir 5y ago
  It was released as a highly-polished game for mobile, by a company that had experience in the space. It didn't and currently doesn't do the external marketing tricks/growth hacks freemium games are notorious for.
  - wccrawford 5y ago
    Mobile, PC, and console all at once, as I recall. They really marketed the crap out of it and were on the necessary platforms to capitalize on it, too. And with a game that had not only polished content, but plenty of it at launch.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      I'm sure I'll get a lot of hate for bringing this up, but it's also worth noting that they definitely rode on the coattails of Zelda's success. So much of that game's identity is lifted wholesale from Breath of the Wild that it can almost be hard to tell the two apart in side-by-side screenshots. Again, none of this is particularly bad, but it definitely contributed to it's meteoric popularity.
      - wccrawford 5y ago
        Other than being cell-shaded, I've never understood the comparisons... But I absolutely remember tons of people saying how alike they were, so I think you're correct about them riding its coat-tails.
- daxuak 5y ago
  Sponsored promotional fanart is a thing, and the sponsor often can have the artists post the stuff at specific date with specific captions, which creates a feeling of a surge in popularity for bystanders. Once the tag/keyword becomes trendy, many artist wanna-bes would (have to) draw fanarts either out of affection/because they actually enjoy the game, or simply to ride on the popularity and attract followers for themselves - I'm not trying to badmouth this, and I feel for the rising artists, but this has been a pattern that I obvserved over and over again. Personally I absolutely hate this game for both the gatcha aspect and the blatant plagiarism.
Gunax 5y ago
I don't see how these numbers are possible. $12B means you need to have 1.2B players paying $10 each, or 120M players $100 each. That just does not seem feasible--there are only so many people in the world and most are not going to play your game. And the nature of these games is that most people never pay anything.
- mattnewton 5y ago
  The numbers are crazy still, but I think it's probably something very top-heavy, like you have 50m players paying $200 each and 1m players paying 2,000 each. It is very easy to spend a _lot_ of money - see https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2021/09/07/what-spending-1723-in-a-year-on-genshin-impact-gets-you/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2021/09/07/what-spend... Edit: the article seems to say that the number is actually 2.3 billion to $3.5 billion. So, at the low end of 2.3 billion you are looking at "just" 1m "whale" players paying 2,000 each, and 1-3m players paying a few dollars. Google search shows me estimates of about 8m-9m MAU, so this seems possible.
- sergiotapia 5y ago
  The scales for these games are heavily HEAVILY tilted by weak minded, vulnerable whales. They spend thousands of dollars a month because they are addicted. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-fxfuWhff0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-fxfuWhff0
- pwinnski 5y ago
  And a surprisingly high number of people pay quite a bit, even thousands of dollars. The curve for games like this is steep.
- dr_kiszonka 5y ago
  AFAIK, IAPs are not uniformly or normally distributed. The vast majority of players pay nothing or close to nothing, while a few "whales" pay a ton. "Yet, only 5% of total app users make any in-app purchase (Sterling, 2016), and 70% of those in-app purchases appear to come from big spenders or ‘Whales' who account for only the top 10% of the paying users (Shaul, 2016)." [0] 0. What Causes Users’ Unwillingness to Spend Money for in-App Purchases in Mobile Games? a Structured Abstract; https://easychair.org/publications/preprint/HxVC https://easychair.org/publications/preprint/HxVC Maybe they have proportionally way more whales than other games? (I strongly dislike the "whales" term. Is there a less condescending synonym?)
awill 5y ago
I hate that the gacha model (free game with millions of IAPs) is working. I refuse to play/buy them, and I worry that it's just the future. Why would Sony spend so much making a single player offline game to get a one-time purchase when they can milk their customers tens of dollars a month for years.
- Macha 5y ago
  Yeah, I feel like we're just being left behind. Voting with your wallet is way less effective when companies give a way for whales to outvote you many times compared to a single purchase game. I feel like in 20 years I'm just going to be playing indie games and games that are then 25 years old.
  - feoren 5y ago
    In 20 years, indie games are going to be amazing! The tools just keep improving at an accelerating rate.
  - awill 5y ago
    Yes. I knew building up my Steam backlog would pay off :)
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  You don’t change any gameplay with skins from Fortnite, CS:GO, or TF2. What you’re describing though was why Kojima left Konami after they turned to gatcha games (including MGS) and Konami is focusing on pachinko.
- bogwog 5y ago
  > Why would Sony spend so much making a single player offline game to get a one-time purchase when they can milk their customers tens of dollars a month for years. Probably because when those mobile casinos get regulated, Sony’s model will pull ahead.
- minimaxir 5y ago
  > Why would Sony spend so much making a single player offline game to get a one-time purchase when they can milk their customers tens of dollars a month for years. Because releasing a game with a games-as-a-service model is a massive technical and logistical challenge if you want to retain players and isn't free money. A good recent example is The Avengers, which was sunk from the forced-GaaS model. Also, after EA released Anthem and Star Wars: Battlefront II which had massive backlash due to their flawed GaaS, EA released Jedi: Fallen Order as a single-player game with no gimmicks, and it sold incredibly well.
slg 5y ago
I noticed that the EA Sports titles aren't on the list. The FIFA franchise pulls in at least $2b every year (31 million units sold[1] which is $1.5b at roughly $50 per unit plus a likely majority of the $1.6b of EA's annual Ultimate Team revenue[2]) If each yearly CoD release counts as a new game for this metric, I'm not sure why the yearly FIFA releases wouldn't. [1] - https://www.earlygame.com/fifa/ea-fifa-21-most-succesful-all-time/ https://www.earlygame.com/fifa/ea-fifa-21-most-succesful-all... [2] - https://www.vg247.com/ultimate-team-ea-1-62-billion https://www.vg247.com/ultimate-team-ea-1-62-billion
vmception 5y ago
I didn't realize this was a real game lol. I've seen it mentioned in the comments of practically every Instagram ad by people saying Genshin was better or how the advertised game is "like Genshin Impact" The same has been going on all year with Appstore reviews I don't download any of the games but I am on the lookout for something intruiging Seems I am out of the loop, but also that I don't want to be in the loop of an IAP riddled freemium game.
dandotway 5y ago
One of the worst things about the freemium model is that the games tend to be very grindy time suckers those who don't pay-to-play. Millions of souls spend hours each day just farming in-game treasure and it actually ends up being work rather than fun. So many of these people are missing out on the joy of crafting or farming actual things in the real world and selling them on eBay or Etsy or locally. These grindy games in particular end up preying on millions of kids who don't have wads of cash, but do have free time and get sucked in. This is perhaps why addiction to games like Genshin Impact has gotten so severe in China that authorities have taken action to limit play hours.
- azurezyq 5y ago
  It seems that you don't play Genshin impact game. You can't buy ascension materials with money. You pay for stronger characters with more versatile playstyles, but it won't make the game less grindy. You still have to fight for materials by yourself. Also as other said, different f2p games work differently. In Genshin, you can easily complete the main request with free characters. Most people (like me), just pay to pull for particular characters they love. (Just check Hu Tao's character demo from their official yt account and you may get a glimpse how the characters (regardless of strength) are attracting themselves.))
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Nah. If you want to get a good team in Genshin you will grind. You can't buy the most cumbersome progress items. The actual hours of grind are the same no matter what. If you pay, you'll be able to farm for these items longer in a day. But it will still take the same amount of runs. The longest grind are artifacts. To get the best artifacts for one character you will need to clear a level 2000-3000 times. That will take you 80-300 hours pretty much no matter what. Now those could be over 100 days or it could be in twenty days, but you'll have to run the level as many times.
  - dandotway 5y ago
    Wow, imagine if a few years ago a startup said its game would earn billions despite forcing whale players who pay a fortune to still have to grind a level 2000-3000 times if they wanted the best artifacts. How many of us would have invested? The craziest things in this world are making people filthy rich. I've just now been learning about the NFT madness....
niknoble 5y ago
This game has one major selling point that I haven't seen anyone mention yet: It is full of attractive girls in revealing outfits. In addition to making the game more enjoyable, this pours rocket fuel onto distribution since it leads people to make fanart. This is not a quirk of Genshin in particular, but a core feature of the genre, as evidenced by the huge number of gacha games on the app store that also have this feature. They may differ from Genshin in setting or core gameplay mechanics, but beautiful girls are a constant. People who play these games often say that it doesn't factor into their enjoyment ("I thought the story was unique, the endgame was engaging, etc"), but the download numbers say otherwise. Since my HN account is a pseudonym, I will readily admit that I considered getting into this genre, and my primary reason was the appearance of the girls in the promotional materials. Unironically, I would consider this something of an innovation in game design. Western games never used this technique as openly as the gacha genre, and lately they have become even more conservative. As an example, compare League of Legends in its early days to the game today. I think there is a huge opportunity in this space for any Western game company who borrows the wisdom of our Eastern counterparts.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  You seen the virtual YouTubers haven’t you? Attractive graphics and beauty in games is absolutely already known.
- Jowsey 5y ago
  Not only attractive girls, but attractive guys too! The majority of my Genshin-playing friends are female, for what it's worth. I'm sure that's definitely helped them, as many similar games are solely marketed towards teen guys. Big gap in the market, and they took it.

126 points by eunos 5y ago

It amuses me that Game Informer publishes something about Genshin Impact every month even though Gamestop, the parent company of Game Informer doesn't make a dime off it.

garmaine 5y ago
Should a magazine only write about stuff that directly profits it’s owners?
- PaulHoule 5y ago
  No, but it's a case study for how Gamestop is getting written out of the script for games in the 2020s. I have been a fan of refurbished hardware and used games from Gamestop for a long time, but short of buying Valve it's hard to see what they can do to stay relevant.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mattnewton 5y ago
I assume their main revenue is ads they run alongside the content, and so if people want to read genshin content and will do so alongside ads they are making money
lapetitejort 5y ago
Interesting. I searched on their website and couldn't find any premium currency that other games like Fortnite and NBA 2K sells. I wonder why they don't make it purchasable in stores, and how they made so much money without a physical aspect.
TMWNN 5y ago
My understanding is that Game Informer has always done a very good job of remaining editorially independent from its retail owner.

minimaxir 5y ago

Previous discussion on the gameplay/monetization mechanics of Genshin Impact (as there's a lot of misconceptions around them): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28177763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28177763

mattnewton 5y ago
I started to feel like I needed a spreadsheet to keep track of all the currencies and make sure characters were getting the right leveled gear and stopped immediately after that. It's very easy to talk yourself into the value you are getting when there are 3-4 levels of indirection between the actual dollars spent and the on game reward. I normally don't mind some level of "accounting" work in rpgs but the fact that the layers of currency could start with real dollars kinda made the whole experience feel like a trap to conceal the actual cost of playing the game a certain way. I think this is a very dark pattern.

rowanG077 5y ago

This makes me really, really depressed.

eunos 5y ago

I'm just surprised that Genshin impact beats company like Las Vegas sands and almost Bet365.

spywaregorilla 5y ago

I like playing gacha games when they're F2P friendly. It's a neat game mechanic. The resource conservation and gambling aspect is fun. But people who spend money on these games... are just so strange to me. The value of money spent is incredibly low. Genshin is one of the stingiest games. Yet on its recent first anniversary, people were surprised that they were, yet again, very stingy. The lack of self awareness of what they're playing on the gacha communities is so odd to me. I'm not super familiar with genshin specifically, but in a lot of these games, players don't really play the game. Like, they'll just lookup pre made team setups that allow them to win with no skill or input. This is the strangest thing to me. Why do people like just following along a game if they're not going to take any accountability. It's like the MMORPG grind of enjoying the numbers going up from yesteryear, but somehow, even one step further removed than before.

itg 5y ago
Some people will spend a few dollars here and there because they feel they got value from it due to the amount of time spent playing. Compare that to a $60 single player game that you complete in 20 hours and never touch again. Whales on the other hand I will never understand.
- rjeli 5y ago
  In college I would pirate everything and think paying for in game items was stupid. Now I will happily spend $1-5 for a few hours of fun in a well balanced game, e.g. hearthstone. But when I tried to get into Genshin Impact I quickly gave up after realizing I would have to spend at least $50 if not hundreds to roll a good team, or just stick with a completely f2p grind (which I don’t have time for anymore).
  - Tijdreiziger 5y ago
    Isn't Hearthstone one of the most spendy games, though? I haven't touched it in a few years, but back then, if you wanted to have a deck with any sort of competitiveness, you'd have to spend €50-100 or more on packs every extension (2x/year).

devindotcom 5y ago

This is difficult to judge either way, since on one hand Genshin is a deplorable gacha-style addiction machine and the worst of what gaming has to offer. Gambling-powered GaaS is a pretty scary combo. But on the other, it's a fabulously beautiful and well crafted open world with tons of things to do and explore, offered completely for free, no strings attached. It's almost entirely single-player so there's no competitive pressure, money is only needed if you don't have enough in-game currency to snag a character you want. I've played happily on and off for months and only experimentally paid $5 to see if it was worth it. I have more characters and resources than I know what to do with and have had a great time. But the business model is definitely predatory on people who are willing to pay hundreds or thousands to score a character or optimal item. Of course we've seen that happen with in-app purchases of crystals and smurfberries for years. The model works, which is the best and worst you can say of it.

scotty79 5y ago
> But the business model is definitely predatory on people who are willing to pay hundreds or thousands to score a character or optimal item. At this point so many busnisses exploit unreasonableness of some of their customers. Aren't people being sold this season's handbag for few thousands of dollars exploited?
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  Nonfunctional Jewelry has been around has been around since prehistoric times.
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    And it was, generally, valued. Last year's handbag is worthless, but next year's handbag? Priceless.
    - skhr0680 5y ago
      Nike somehow managed to f**k up sewing a piece of canvas to a piece of rubber and now a $40 pair of Converse sneakers is functionally equivalent to or worse than a $10 knock off. The only value in those shoes is literally the brand name.

wodenokoto 5y ago

It seemed like Genshin went from zero to 100 in absolutely no time. Like they came out of nowhere, and suddenly all of reddit was full of fanart and they're making more money than anyother game. Are there any good articles on how the game started, how it got funded and built its now enormous fanbase?

minimaxir 5y ago
It was released as a highly-polished game for mobile, by a company that had experience in the space. It didn't and currently doesn't do the external marketing tricks/growth hacks freemium games are notorious for.
- wccrawford 5y ago
  Mobile, PC, and console all at once, as I recall. They really marketed the crap out of it and were on the necessary platforms to capitalize on it, too. And with a game that had not only polished content, but plenty of it at launch.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    I'm sure I'll get a lot of hate for bringing this up, but it's also worth noting that they definitely rode on the coattails of Zelda's success. So much of that game's identity is lifted wholesale from Breath of the Wild that it can almost be hard to tell the two apart in side-by-side screenshots. Again, none of this is particularly bad, but it definitely contributed to it's meteoric popularity.
    - wccrawford 5y ago
      Other than being cell-shaded, I've never understood the comparisons... But I absolutely remember tons of people saying how alike they were, so I think you're correct about them riding its coat-tails.
daxuak 5y ago
Sponsored promotional fanart is a thing, and the sponsor often can have the artists post the stuff at specific date with specific captions, which creates a feeling of a surge in popularity for bystanders. Once the tag/keyword becomes trendy, many artist wanna-bes would (have to) draw fanarts either out of affection/because they actually enjoy the game, or simply to ride on the popularity and attract followers for themselves - I'm not trying to badmouth this, and I feel for the rising artists, but this has been a pattern that I obvserved over and over again. Personally I absolutely hate this game for both the gatcha aspect and the blatant plagiarism.

Gunax 5y ago

I don't see how these numbers are possible. $12B means you need to have 1.2B players paying $10 each, or 120M players $100 each. That just does not seem feasible--there are only so many people in the world and most are not going to play your game. And the nature of these games is that most people never pay anything.

mattnewton 5y ago
The numbers are crazy still, but I think it's probably something very top-heavy, like you have 50m players paying $200 each and 1m players paying 2,000 each. It is very easy to spend a _lot_ of money - see https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2021/09/07/what-spending-1723-in-a-year-on-genshin-impact-gets-you/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2021/09/07/what-spend... Edit: the article seems to say that the number is actually 2.3 billion to $3.5 billion. So, at the low end of 2.3 billion you are looking at "just" 1m "whale" players paying 2,000 each, and 1-3m players paying a few dollars. Google search shows me estimates of about 8m-9m MAU, so this seems possible.
sergiotapia 5y ago
The scales for these games are heavily HEAVILY tilted by weak minded, vulnerable whales. They spend thousands of dollars a month because they are addicted. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-fxfuWhff0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-fxfuWhff0
pwinnski 5y ago
And a surprisingly high number of people pay quite a bit, even thousands of dollars. The curve for games like this is steep.
dr_kiszonka 5y ago
AFAIK, IAPs are not uniformly or normally distributed. The vast majority of players pay nothing or close to nothing, while a few "whales" pay a ton. "Yet, only 5% of total app users make any in-app purchase (Sterling, 2016), and 70% of those in-app purchases appear to come from big spenders or ‘Whales' who account for only the top 10% of the paying users (Shaul, 2016)." [0] 0. What Causes Users’ Unwillingness to Spend Money for in-App Purchases in Mobile Games? a Structured Abstract; https://easychair.org/publications/preprint/HxVC https://easychair.org/publications/preprint/HxVC Maybe they have proportionally way more whales than other games? (I strongly dislike the "whales" term. Is there a less condescending synonym?)

awill 5y ago

I hate that the gacha model (free game with millions of IAPs) is working. I refuse to play/buy them, and I worry that it's just the future. Why would Sony spend so much making a single player offline game to get a one-time purchase when they can milk their customers tens of dollars a month for years.

Macha 5y ago
Yeah, I feel like we're just being left behind. Voting with your wallet is way less effective when companies give a way for whales to outvote you many times compared to a single purchase game. I feel like in 20 years I'm just going to be playing indie games and games that are then 25 years old.
- feoren 5y ago
  In 20 years, indie games are going to be amazing! The tools just keep improving at an accelerating rate.
- awill 5y ago
  Yes. I knew building up my Steam backlog would pay off :)
GhettoComputers 5y ago
You don’t change any gameplay with skins from Fortnite, CS:GO, or TF2. What you’re describing though was why Kojima left Konami after they turned to gatcha games (including MGS) and Konami is focusing on pachinko.
bogwog 5y ago
> Why would Sony spend so much making a single player offline game to get a one-time purchase when they can milk their customers tens of dollars a month for years. Probably because when those mobile casinos get regulated, Sony’s model will pull ahead.
minimaxir 5y ago
> Why would Sony spend so much making a single player offline game to get a one-time purchase when they can milk their customers tens of dollars a month for years. Because releasing a game with a games-as-a-service model is a massive technical and logistical challenge if you want to retain players and isn't free money. A good recent example is The Avengers, which was sunk from the forced-GaaS model. Also, after EA released Anthem and Star Wars: Battlefront II which had massive backlash due to their flawed GaaS, EA released Jedi: Fallen Order as a single-player game with no gimmicks, and it sold incredibly well.

slg 5y ago

I noticed that the EA Sports titles aren't on the list. The FIFA franchise pulls in at least $2b every year (31 million units sold[1] which is $1.5b at roughly $50 per unit plus a likely majority of the $1.6b of EA's annual Ultimate Team revenue[2]) If each yearly CoD release counts as a new game for this metric, I'm not sure why the yearly FIFA releases wouldn't. [1] - https://www.earlygame.com/fifa/ea-fifa-21-most-succesful-all-time/ https://www.earlygame.com/fifa/ea-fifa-21-most-succesful-all... [2] - https://www.vg247.com/ultimate-team-ea-1-62-billion https://www.vg247.com/ultimate-team-ea-1-62-billion

vmception 5y ago

I didn't realize this was a real game lol. I've seen it mentioned in the comments of practically every Instagram ad by people saying Genshin was better or how the advertised game is "like Genshin Impact" The same has been going on all year with Appstore reviews I don't download any of the games but I am on the lookout for something intruiging Seems I am out of the loop, but also that I don't want to be in the loop of an IAP riddled freemium game.

dandotway 5y ago

One of the worst things about the freemium model is that the games tend to be very grindy time suckers those who don't pay-to-play. Millions of souls spend hours each day just farming in-game treasure and it actually ends up being work rather than fun. So many of these people are missing out on the joy of crafting or farming actual things in the real world and selling them on eBay or Etsy or locally. These grindy games in particular end up preying on millions of kids who don't have wads of cash, but do have free time and get sucked in. This is perhaps why addiction to games like Genshin Impact has gotten so severe in China that authorities have taken action to limit play hours.

azurezyq 5y ago
It seems that you don't play Genshin impact game. You can't buy ascension materials with money. You pay for stronger characters with more versatile playstyles, but it won't make the game less grindy. You still have to fight for materials by yourself. Also as other said, different f2p games work differently. In Genshin, you can easily complete the main request with free characters. Most people (like me), just pay to pull for particular characters they love. (Just check Hu Tao's character demo from their official yt account and you may get a glimpse how the characters (regardless of strength) are attracting themselves.))
sudosysgen 5y ago
Nah. If you want to get a good team in Genshin you will grind. You can't buy the most cumbersome progress items. The actual hours of grind are the same no matter what. If you pay, you'll be able to farm for these items longer in a day. But it will still take the same amount of runs. The longest grind are artifacts. To get the best artifacts for one character you will need to clear a level 2000-3000 times. That will take you 80-300 hours pretty much no matter what. Now those could be over 100 days or it could be in twenty days, but you'll have to run the level as many times.
- dandotway 5y ago
  Wow, imagine if a few years ago a startup said its game would earn billions despite forcing whale players who pay a fortune to still have to grind a level 2000-3000 times if they wanted the best artifacts. How many of us would have invested? The craziest things in this world are making people filthy rich. I've just now been learning about the NFT madness....

niknoble 5y ago

This game has one major selling point that I haven't seen anyone mention yet: It is full of attractive girls in revealing outfits. In addition to making the game more enjoyable, this pours rocket fuel onto distribution since it leads people to make fanart. This is not a quirk of Genshin in particular, but a core feature of the genre, as evidenced by the huge number of gacha games on the app store that also have this feature. They may differ from Genshin in setting or core gameplay mechanics, but beautiful girls are a constant. People who play these games often say that it doesn't factor into their enjoyment ("I thought the story was unique, the endgame was engaging, etc"), but the download numbers say otherwise. Since my HN account is a pseudonym, I will readily admit that I considered getting into this genre, and my primary reason was the appearance of the girls in the promotional materials. Unironically, I would consider this something of an innovation in game design. Western games never used this technique as openly as the gacha genre, and lately they have become even more conservative. As an example, compare League of Legends in its early days to the game today. I think there is a huge opportunity in this space for any Western game company who borrows the wisdom of our Eastern counterparts.

GhettoComputers 5y ago
You seen the virtual YouTubers haven’t you? Attractive graphics and beauty in games is absolutely already known.
Jowsey 5y ago
Not only attractive girls, but attractive guys too! The majority of my Genshin-playing friends are female, for what it's worth. I'm sure that's definitely helped them, as many similar games are solely marketed towards teen guys. Big gap in the market, and they took it.