Honkai: Star Rail was released in April, and has quickly emerged as 2023’s breakout hit, and broken records with a massive 20 million downloads within just two days. The game helped push its developer, miHoYo, past NetEase to be the second highest-grossing mobile publisher in China.
This success, perhaps inevitably, has seen the developer’s previous smash hit, Genshin Impact, experience its lowest yet monthly revenue, as reported by Game World Observer.
Data obtained by Appmagic shows that Genshin Impact generated $53.8 million in revenue in May, representing a 38.6% decrease from $87.7 million in April. In contrast, Honkai: Star Rail surpassed $132 million in revenue over the month, almost three times as much.
This total also represents an 18% decrease from $65.6 million in June 2021, previously the game’s lowest earning month.
Shooting for the stars
In contrast, the company’s best performing month, October 2020, saw Genshin Impact generate $172.1 million in revenue. Notably, however, whereas Honkai Star Rail has so far released only on mobile and PC, Genshin Impact was initially released on consoles as well, highlighting once again the remarkable success of Honkai: Star Rail is such a short time frame and the strength of phones as a gaming platform.
It’s also worth noting that, despite the decline in Genshin Impact’s success, it still remains among the most popular mobile games in the world, and massively profitable in its own right.
Honkai: Star Rail may be in its infancy but its addictive gameplay, art style, and story has put it on the track for success. The game propelled miHoYo past NetEase in terms of revenue, marking it as the second most profitable mobile game maker in the world’s biggest mobile gaming market.
Discussing the release of Honkai: Star Rail, an unnamed employee of MiHoyo stated “It’s clear the intention is to make it at least as big as Genshin Impact and to make it the main title of the company.” Honkai: Star Rail has certainly surpassed Genshin Impact, at least for now, and time will tell whether it emerges as miHoYo’s flagship title.
We listed MiHoYo as one of the top 50 mobile game makers of 2022.
