Genshin Impact Dev’s Surpassed PlayStation’s Profit Figures, Is This the Rise of Gacha Genre?

PlayStation, a brand produced by tech giant Sony, is a market leader in the gaming industry. Under the PS brand, Sony has released multiple consoles and games. PlayStation 4 and PS2 are in the top 5 best-selling game consoles of all time, with their latest PlayStation 5 making its way up. With these impressive sales figures, fans would expect the company to be stacking insurmountable profits. But they were left behind by a Gacha gaming company.

Chinese video game development company miHoYo left the console makers behind in profits for 2022 with their game Genshin Impact. This revelation has called questions on the policies of PlayStation studios. Furthermore, this has also made fans wonder if the model adopted by miHoYo is the future of gaming.

Genshin Impact developers leave PlayStation behind in yearly profits

In a recent report by Guangming Daily, they declared the profits of the Chinese company. In 2022, miHoYo’s revenue was 27.3 billion Yuan ($3.8 billion), with a net profit of 16.14 billion Yuan ($2.27 billion). However, the company has decided not to go public yet. Therefore, it’s very rare for them to publicly give out information on their revenue, unless, of course, it’s the tax bureau who’s asking. However, their net profit has blown PlayStation’s $1.84 billion out of the water.

The main reason attributed to this success is their two main titles, Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. The Chinese company has been pushing these games on the successful business model of the gacha genre. They make their titles free-to-play and earn money mainly through in-game purchases. The Chinese company encourages players to roll for new characters. But this however costs more money if players want more rolls.

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This model from miHoYo not only enabled them to surpass PlayStation in profit but also gaming giants like Activision Blizzard and EA Sports. Activision Blizzard’s revenue for 2022 was $8.1 billion, with a net profit of $1.8 billion. Whereas EA’s revenue for 2022 was 7.4 billion, with a net profit of $802 million.

With the continued growth of Genshin and the release of Honkai: Star Rail this year, the revenue for miHoYo could only go up for the year 2023. Furthermore, the studio is also expanding its domain as Star Rail is set to release on PlayStation 5 later this year.

What are your thoughts on the success achieved by miHoYo over gaming veterans like PlayStation? Let us know in the comments section below.

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