miHoYo’s ambitions go beyond Genshin Impact. The Shanghai-based company is aiming to build its own virtual universe with a user base of roughly 1 billion players.
Zenless Zone Zero
Liu Wei, co-founder of miHoYo, opened up about the company’s plans in a recent interview with Chinese newspaper The Paper.
- miHoYo will continue to invest more in cultural and technological innovation, as well as AI and cloud games.
- One of the company’s biggest and most ambitious goals is to build a virtual world that “1 billion people are willing to live in” by 2030.
- miHoYo will continue its global expansion, as it currently has offices in Los Angeles, Montreal, Seoul, Tokyo, and Singapore.
- “At present, the domestic and international challenges of the games industry are very big,” Wei noted. “We are still in the process of learning and adjusting, and we will continue to move towards internationalization in the future.”
It is unclear exactly what the company means by this virtual world with 1 billion users, but it likely refers to its previously announced content and business strategy.
miHoYo first revealed its metaverse ambitions by launching the HoYoverse brand last year. One of its main goals was to create an “immersive virtual world experience to players worldwide through a variety of entertainment services.” Ever since, the company has been operating globally under the HoYoverse label.
Genshin Impact remains miHoYo’s biggest hit to date, with over $4 billion in lifetime mobile revenue. But the Shanghai-based company also wants to diversify its portfolio by investing in other products that are likely to become part of its virtual universe.
miHoYo’s pipeline includes at least two confirmed big-budget projects, turn-based RPG Honkai: Star Rail and action game with roguelike elements Zenless Zone Zero. Last year, the company also canceled Project SH, an unannounced title led by miHoYo co-founder and president Cai Haoyu. It was described as an anime-style, GTA-like action game built with Unreal Engine 5.