Thanks to the success of its breakout hit Genshin Impact, the Shanghai-based gaming company miHoYo Limited witnessed a surge in revenue in the last year.
According to data presented by Mejores Apuestas, miHoYo mobile games generated $855 million in revenue in the eight months of 2021, more than in the last three years combined.
The Biggest Ever International Launch for a Chinese-made Mobile Game
Last year, Genshin Impact enjoyed the biggest ever international launch for a Chinese-made game. According to SensorTower data, in just two months after its launch in September 2020, Genshin Impact earned $400 million in revenue on Google Play and the App Store.
Moreover, the mobile game drove huge sales and headcount growth for its developer, miHoYo. In 2015, the Shanghai-based firm generated $13.5 million in annual revenue, revealed the AppMagic data. Just a year later, this figure doubled to $26.7 million and continued rising. Statistics show that by 2019, miHoYo’s annual revenue surged by 500% to $162.2. However, that was nothing compared to the 2020 and 2021 figures.
After the launch of Genshin Impact, the company’s annual revenues more than tripled and hit $546.5 million last year. The impressive sales figures continued in 2021, with the gaming company generating $885.6 million in IAP revenues in the eight months of the year, almost $340 million more than in the entire 2020.
Genshin Impact the Second Highest-Grossing Mobile Game Globally, with over 70M Downloads in Less than a Year
Ever since the launch of Genshin Impact, MiHoYo has put a strong emphasis on live operations, regularly introducing new content and characters to the title to keep players engaged.
Such an approach has been driving a surge in the number of Genshin Impact players, with the game reaching impressive download figures even before its first anniversary. According to AppMagic data, the action role-playing game was downloaded around 4.5 million times each month since its release, except October 2020 as the record month to date, with the total number of downloads reaching 70 million in August this year.
Statistics show the anime-style action RPG has around 4.5 million monthly active users, with more than half of them using the iOS version of the game. Such a massive user base continues bringing impressive revenues.
In less than a year since its release, Genshin Impact became the fastest mobile gaming app to generate $1 billion in player spending worldwide. Moreover, it ranked as the No. 2 revenue-generating mobile game globally, following Tencent’s PUBG Mobile and ranking above hits like Pokémon GO and Roblox.
Statistics show that in the nine months of the year, the action role-playing game grossed $923 million worldwide, $10 million more than Tencent’s Honor of Kings and $200 million more than Roblox or Pokémon GO.
