miHoYo and Tencent have recently reached an official partnership. Starting from version 2.1 of Genshin Impact, the application package appeared in Tencent Appstore for the first time. As of press time, the number of downloads has exceeded 710,000, with a rating of 4.5.
This is not the first time that Genshin Impact was sold through third-party platforms - after teaming up with BiliBili and TapTap, miHoYo even reached partnership with Xiaomi and launched the game on a hardware channel for the first time in February of this year. However, this time the partnership with Tencent features the official miHoYo server version of Genshin Impact, meaning the game does not tap into Tencent’s account system. It is rather rare for Tencent to publish games that they have no control over, yet they are willing to sacrifice the revenue generated by exclusive channels in order to work with miHoYo – Tencent is clearly trying its utmost to make this partnership work.
Genshin Impact has been a global mega-hit since its launch last September, and the developer company behind it, miHoYo, also took second place on the global publisher revenue chart in the following October, just behind industry leader Tencent. Perhaps it was because of this eye-catching performance that Tencent felt the need to partner. In fact, the giant had approached miHoYo for a stake in the company previously, but was declined.
This time, Tencent has prepared a variety of promotional resources for Genshin Impact, such as home page recommendations, special pages and premium perks, and the move of putting up the official server version is unprecedented. This partnership seems to be a win-win situation: for players, the official server version means a unified player community, which leads to a better playing experience; for miHoYo, it will bring a new growth point for the game when the new version is launched on the Tencent Appstore; and for Tencent, the introduction of Genshin Impact can lay the groundwork for future cooperation with miHoYo, creating a broader market than if it were a solo effort.
It seems that both hardware and software developers have realized the need for quality content to guarantee the value of their products – content will always be king, and Genshin Impact does show a strong market appeal. We are excited to see that the channel side, represented by Tencent and Xiaomi, is actively trying new distribution and cooperative business models based on the promotion of top games.