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Sensor Tower: Genshin Impact brings in nearly $400 million in 2 months on mobile

Image Credit: Sensor Tower

Genshin is sure having an impact on MiHoYo’s bottom line.

Mobile analytics firm Sensor Tower said today that Genshin Impact has brought in an estimated $393 million in the first two months after its September 28 launch. But the firm also noted that spending in the second month didn’t keep up with its first month ($245 million).

The free-to-play open-world role-playing game is on iOS and Android, but it’s also a hit on the PC, the PlayStation 4, and the Nintendo Switch. And it also runs on the PlayStation 5.

For a few weeks, Genshin captured the gaming zeitgeist (and an estimated $245 million in spending in its first month), with the Zelda: Breath of the Wild-esque game inspiring myriad discussions on social media and spawning numerous streams and videos on Twitch and YouTube. Along with Among Us and Fall Guys, Genshin showed how games with social elements could thrive in a time when folks were staying home to avoid COVID-19. Google Play named Genshin Impact its 2020 game of the year.

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It also shows that mobile players are hungry for beefier RPGs that can rival what’s on PC or console … or live on all three platforms.

And its success is global, something that hasn’t happened with other mobile RPGs yet.

“Genshin Impact is the only mobile RPG that’s performed this well so early in its release — of course, we’re not counting China’s third-party Android stores in this,” Sensor Tower’s Randy Nelson said in an email. “There are others that have done very well, but those successes are commonly region-specific, such as we see with the Lineage games in South Korea or Tencent’s various mobile MMOs in China. Genshin Impact’s a standout in that it has performed so well internationally, and its achievement is even rarer among Chinese-made mobile titles. ”

Sensor Tower says Genshin Impact was the No. 2 mobile game in terms of generating revenue in the world, trailing only Tencent’s money-making powerhouse Honor of Kings (think League of Legends but on smartphones and tablets). The firm estimates that Genshin Impact has been earning more than $6 million a day since launch.

And it’s not doing well just because of the pandemic.

“… the game certainly owes a lot of its early success to a stellar marketing effort bolstered by its standout presentation. There really isn’t another mobile game like it, visually or gameplay-wise,” Nelson said. “It stood out early on in its development because of this, and also due to the fact that it was a multiplatform game of this caliber originating from a Chinese developer. The combination of publicity and production value really made it unmissable and endeared it to the hardcore community that it needed in order to succeed out of the gate. Gamers aren’t accustomed to encountering free-to-play titles of this caliber on any platform, let along mobile.”

And to no one’s surprise, China is Genshin’s No. 1 market for player spending, with $120 million (30.5%) of the two-month number. Japan (another region with a mobile-first player base) is No. 2 with about $98 million (about 25%). The U.S. is third at $74 million (18.8%), and it’s fourth in South Korea.

The one region it’s not catching on: Europe. “It’s not seeing much spending from Europe so far. Germany is its largest market there and only accounts for about 2.4% of the game’s revenue so far,” Nelson said.

For spenders, iOS proved to be the bigger platform, bringing in an estimated $226 million (57.5%).

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