Just now, TapTap has confirmed that Zenless Zone Zero, a mobile game trademarked by Shanghai JiaoZhai Technology Co, has opened an official account on the Tap Tap app. Hoyoverse and Hoyoverse’s CEO LiuWei are the primary stockholders for Shanghai JiaoZhai Technology Co. As such, This is likely to be HoYoverse's next unannounced new game, following the start of Alpha testing of the new Honkai series, Star Rail, in late April. Sources say Zenless Zone Zero will likely release a trailer in the near future.
Although HoYoverse did not give more details on the game's mechanics and storyline, gamers and HoYo fans firmly believe that Zenless Zone Zero is the AAA open-world third-person shooter game that HoYoverse has long developed.
Back in 2019, at the China GPU Technology Conference, NVIDIA announced that it would support ray tracing technology for a future open-world TPS game developed by HoYoverse. The game was called Project X at the time, and Project X hasn't been mentioned at gaming conventions or HoYoverse events since 2019. It wasn't until November 2021 that HoYoverse posted recruiting information on LinkedIn for a branch studio located in Montreal. Intending to form a team of 100 people for an open-world TPS game, and in the same month, HoYoverse also hired Sony Santa Monica Studio's lead level designer Kai Zheng as the team's leader. Based on the high similarity between HoYoverse's two projects, some players believe that Project X is Zenless Zone Zero, which recently began to open official accounts on Chinese social media and in the gaming community. This also explains why there are not many developers in the Montreal team; they are probably developing the game based on the original content of Project X.
It is worth noting that this is the second time since 2022 that HoYoverse has opened an official account for Zenless Zone Zero. They had also opened an account on Weibo, China's largest social media, in March. Like what happened on TapTap, HoYoverse did not reveal any details about the game on Weibo but simply registered the account first.
Update：On May 9, HoYoverse created a countdown teaser web page for Zenless Zone Zero. The web page contains a TV without signal, a calendar and some other posters on the wall. By clicking on the interactive button, the TV pops up with an emergency news sign as well as an audio broadcast - "The August neighborhood in the Janus district was hit by an accompanying cavity disaster half an hour ago. Sheriff's Department have established secondary control and evacuation of residents is in order." What’s more, the count down on TV after the emergency news shows that HoYoverse is ready to release more details about the game that has been developed for years on May 13, let us wait and see.
