Genshin Impact was such a hit that it’s going to cost the studio twice as much as the initial budget, yearly, to support it

‘$200 million per year’

Studio miHoYo is on a roll with Genshin Impact, and thanks to a new interview from Chinese outlet 16P (as translated by Twitter user AE Entropy), we have some idea of where their trajectory is headed.

For the near future, it’s all Genshin Impact all the time. The size of the staff has “double each year” since 2014, hitting a critical mass of 2400 employees in 2020, with 700 of them working on Genshin. They aim to “release a new product every three to four years,” and expand to North America with a new R&D center.

The big takeaway here is the cost to not only create Genshin Impact, but support it. The game reportedly needed $100 million to make, and will cost the studio “$200 million per year” in development costs. The ultimate goal? To create a “virtual world in which one billion people worldwide are willing to live” by 2030. Dystopian and bold.

So, in case you’re wondering, they have the cash. Genshin Impact came out last September, and had accumulated over $400 million in revenue in just over two months. All they have to do is keep the game fresh, and keep people playing/gacha gambling.

Genshin Impact [16P via Twitter]