Thank you to the outstanding team of MiHoYo for showing me how you can create an immersive fantasy world for everyone on the AppStore! Apple CEO Tim Cook recently visited a young game company “MiHoYo” during his busy schedule in Shanghai, and sent a Weibo post like this after the visit.
In its phenomenal online game “Genshin Impact” that has swept the world, MiHoYo used digital technology to create a world full of oriental charm “Liyue”, with brocade and jade belts of traditional Chinese costumes, long-lasting Chinese opera, and ethereal green mountains and waters, which have made global players intoxicated.
The latest “Overall Layout Plan for the Construction of Digital China” proposes to create a confident and prosperous digital culture. Chinese IP companies represented by MiHoYo use games as a carrier to create a virtual universe full of oriental interest and traditional connotations, and use innovative digital technology to drive the excellent traditional Chinese culture to sail out to sea.
Walking into the office area of ??miHoYo Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., young faces are facing the virtual characters on the computer, concentrating on using professional tools to optimize details such as expressions, clothing, and attractions.
Youth and vitality are one of miHoYo’s most distinctive features. In December 2011, Cai Haoyu, Liu Wei, and Luo Yuhao, three graduate students from Shanghai Jiaotong University, developed miHoYo’s first game “FlyMe2theMoon” in their dormitory, starting their entrepreneurial journey. After a period of accumulation, at the end of September 2020, “Genshin Impact” developed by miHoYo became a hit game that swept the global market as soon as it was launched. In the first month, it became the world’s highest-grossing mobile game of the month with a record of US$245 million. Since then, it has won the title of China’s overseas mobile game revenue champion for many consecutive months. At present, “Genshin Impact” has been translated into more than a dozen languages ????including English, German, Japanese, Korean, and Italian, and has become popular in more than 200 countries and regions, and won Apple’s “Best iPhone Game of the Year” award in 2020.
The latest data shows that Mihoyo will generate global revenue of about 10 billion yuan on Apple’s two major terminals, iPhone and iPad, in 2022, ranking third in the world on the iOS platform in terms of annual revenue, of which “Genshin Impact” accounts for about 90%.
“At present, overseas market revenue accounts for 50% of Mihoyo’s total revenue.” Liu Wei, founder of Mihoyo, said, “The company has been developing rapidly for more than ten years, and its vitality is largely derived from the deep exploration of the cultural attributes of the products, creating animation, games, music, peripheral products, etc. in the entire industry chain around the core IP, and presenting an immersive fantasy world for global players.”
The story set in the game “Genshin Impact” takes place in a fantasy world called “Teyvat Continent”, where the seven countries are beautiful in their own way and share beauty. And “Liyue”, which is inspired by China, is undoubtedly the most oriental and the most popular among global players. The game development team carefully incorporates rich traditional cultural details into it, and its “life story” is told in the way of traditional Chinese storytelling. The total number of overseas broadcasts of a single promotional video has exceeded 20 million.
The other side of cultural creation is scientific and technological innovation. “We use high-tech methods to make games, and we insist on using the maximum investment to achieve the highest quality in all details.” Liu Wei said.
A set of data can give us a glimpse of Mihoyo’s investment in “hard technology”. At present, the company’s R&D personnel account for more than 70%, and self-developed inventions account for more than 99% of cloud game-related technologies. Mihoyo has deployed multiple computing centers across the country and has hundreds of patents in the fields of cartoon rendering technology, motion capture digital technology, etc.
Hard technology brings hard power, and Apple regards “Genshin Impact” as one of the benchmarks for testing its hardware quality. Previously, in order to promote and demonstrate the powerful performance of the M1 chip of its new iPad Air, Apple showed the exquisite and delicate game screens and smooth clips in “Genshin Impact”.
Behind every fascinating frame of “Genshin Impact” and every note that hits the heartstrings, the “embroidery skills” of the R&D and creative team are displayed. “Goddess Splits the View” cooperates with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra to complement the clear and graceful flute and guzheng with the majestic and simple symphony. In order to “move” Chinese landscapes into the virtual world, the creative team collected materials in Huangshan, Zhangjiajie, Guilin and other places, and used sound and light to render landscape elements such as “sea of ??clouds”, “Elephant Trunk Hill” and “Stone Forest” to create the legendary and romantic “Liyue