Genshin Impact made quite the impact (no pun intended) when it launched. The action game took many by surprise. Despite being a free to play mobile title that eventually did make its way to PC and consoles, it clearly had a lot of effort and time put into it. In fact, it seems the effort and time is way more than you probably expect.
As translated and transcribed by Twitter user AE Entropy below, developer miHoYo’s President, Cai Haoyu, gave a presentation to the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Alumni Association of Silicon Valley and talked about the game’s development. There he revealed the game cost $100 million USD to produce. That’s a pretty staggering number, especially for a mobile title, but even more so that with current plans the game will cost an incredible $200 million per year for continued development. The game’s staff has double since 2014 and now over 700 staff members are working on the game, and a R&D center is planned for North America.
Genshin Impact has had some pretty hefty updates in the past, but most probably wouldn’t expect those kind of dollar amounts being thrown around. It goes to show just how much money game development can cost at these high levels. The game is available now on PlayStation 4, PC and all compatible iOS and Android devices.
– miHoYo aims to release a new product every 3-4 years
– Staff size has doubled each year since 2014, hitting 2400 in 2020, Genshin staff is ~700
– Plans to build a R&D center in North America
– $100M to create Genshin Impact, but it's expected to cost $200M per year of dev.— AE Entropy (@AeEntropy) February 23, 2021
