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[Bloomberg] HoYoverse's "Zenless Zone Zero" did not meet expectations; next "ambitious open-world" game has been rebooted more than twice
- Thread starter Joseki
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lol
lmao even
Hoyo crash coming soon? It's a darn shame their gameplay isn't up to the standard their writing and animation set up. Or perhaps the problem is monetization? Ah well...
lmao even
Hoyo crash coming soon? It's a darn shame their gameplay isn't up to the standard their writing and animation set up. Or perhaps the problem is monetization? Ah well...
According to chat.com, the game made roughly 500 million dollars so far. Massive flop, apparently.
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The ZZZ stuff honestly feels like old news. I haven’t visited the gacha thread on this forum in months but I know many people there were saying that Hoyo was pretty much cannibalizing itself around ZZZ’s launch. It’s why I found their rumored Animal Crossing game interesting, as that has the best chance to reach a new audience.
Hoyo did tease a new game not too long ago and it seems to take more after Pokémon? Or perhaps Palworld? We’ll have to see.
Hoyo did tease a new game not too long ago and it seems to take more after Pokémon? Or perhaps Palworld? We’ll have to see.
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I think the problem was that the 500M was taken from their prior two games instead of generating new revenue
the monster catcher could be something, but could not be. the animal crossing / life sim is probably the best bet for expanding the audience
but a AAAA open world gta-like with a bunch of western devs on staff (though not anymore)? sounds like a bomba waiting to happen
but a AAAA open world gta-like with a bunch of western devs on staff (though not anymore)? sounds like a bomba waiting to happen
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I’m gonna say that if Hoyoverse is seeing declines in sales, this feels like “canary in the coal mine” for the rest of the mobile space. Not that I’m terribly surprised or anything if mobile revenues are falling, it’s seemed less resilient against inflationary/economic pressures than the rest of the games industry.
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I find those Niko Partners estimates to be completely off and unlikely.
$4.7B Rev 2024, $6B+ in 2023, come on now.
Bloomberg has their valuation at $17B...
You are joking right?
A company making $3B+ in revenue and likely $1B+ profit is going to crash? They are borderline making more money than EA/ABK.
$4.7B Rev 2024, $6B+ in 2023, come on now.
Bloomberg has their valuation at $17B...
You are joking right?
A company making $3B+ in revenue and likely $1B+ profit is going to crash? They are borderline making more money than EA/ABK.
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There is already a GTA-like (Ananta I think its called) and its coming out sooner.
there's neverness to everness as well. there's probably a couple more in the works
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Yeah. We have been talking several times on how Hoyo games keep canibalizing their own sales. That seems to be finally be proven. Will be fun to see how they move out from their anime style focus to expand to other genre and other artstyles
People like the BOTW clone part of genskin not the mobile gacha part of the game. That’s why it was a success. A cheap free clone of BOTW.
Removing that entirely but keeping the gacha crap for a new game was a choice. The tanking isn’t surprising at all. People only really care about BOTW not the other stuff. It seems the devs themselves are oblivious to that?
Removing that entirely but keeping the gacha crap for a new game was a choice. The tanking isn’t surprising at all. People only really care about BOTW not the other stuff. It seems the devs themselves are oblivious to that?
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I mean it sounds less like "game is tanking" and more "we sold investors on being able to maintain multiple f2p GAAS games simultaneously and maintaining completely separate audiences for each and that was an obvious pipedream"
Sensor tower isn't really reliable since it's only estimates and only mobile, missing alot of revenue sources like hoyo's own stores, consoles (genshin is consistently 1st and ZZZ occasionally gets 1st place in the JP PSStore) and PC which, at least according to Tencent's CEO, represents 50% of the revenue of big gacha's like Genshin and Wuwa (can't find the article right now). And the decline in revenue has been affecting all gacha's, not just Hoyo's, so it's not an exclusive problem.
The games did cannibalize each other and ZZZ did underperform at the start considering how much they've been changing the game, but there's not enough data to say how well they're doing and "2 people familiar with the company" isn't really a reliable source (also all 3 are likely still making close to 100M every month, so can we really say they're not doing well?)
The games did cannibalize each other and ZZZ did underperform at the start considering how much they've been changing the game, but there's not enough data to say how well they're doing and "2 people familiar with the company" isn't really a reliable source (also all 3 are likely still making close to 100M every month, so can we really say they're not doing well?)
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If you mean the “feeling sick?” ad then no that was Honkai Star Rail.
I mean if this was the case HSR wouldn’t be successful either. Just that Hoyo hit the limits of its audience and it showed with ZZZ. I mean the recent Sensor Tower report showed HSR making a ton of money but Genshin was comparatively low. That’s just mobile but still.
There are ways for Hoyo to expand its audience or at least boost revenue:
- Make games that target a notably different audience than those covered by Genshin, HSR, and ZZZ
- Make a high production value gacha that primarily targets the female audience
- Port your existing gachas to the Switch 2, since you’ll be missing out on a lot of potential whales otherwise
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Just to be clear I’m not saying they should stop doing live service. They can absolutely keep supporting that.
But wouldn’t it make sense to also release a separate single-player, offline version of those same games? Especially the older ones. Package the full story, include all the unlockables, no gacha, just a complete experience.I feel like a lot of people would still pay full price ($60–$70) for something like that, even years later. It’d be a great way to preserve the game and reach a different kind of audience.
And who knows — maybe it could even help improve the long-term financials? There's a market for evergreen SP content, especially once the live elements start slowing down.
But wouldn’t it make sense to also release a separate single-player, offline version of those same games? Especially the older ones. Package the full story, include all the unlockables, no gacha, just a complete experience.I feel like a lot of people would still pay full price ($60–$70) for something like that, even years later. It’d be a great way to preserve the game and reach a different kind of audience.
And who knows — maybe it could even help improve the long-term financials? There's a market for evergreen SP content, especially once the live elements start slowing down.
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You think a game doing $500M+ a year is going to get the axe.....lmao
Star Rail still gets alot of attention every patch, so it's definitely not dead online and not getting the axe.
but the lack of events in the last 2 patches made it so there wouldn't be many people talking about it online besides the beginning of a patch
Since we don't know MHY expenditures we cannot ever really say how much is enough or not (though obviously these large numbers should be plenty) but reporting like this does usually come from people in the know, so if they say that ZZZ underperformed... it probably did. Remember that MHY spent a lot of money on its marketing at launch, so they sunk a lot of money into it aside from just the development.
I don't think Star Rail is anywhere close to being shutting down but... revenue is only one part of the equation. Hoyoverse has 500+ people working on these games and it goes beyond whether a game remains profitable if they think that manpower could be used on a more profitable venture.
The general issue for Hoyoverse is that compared to 3-4 years ago they're spending way more money on developing and maintaining multiple games whilst generally make the same(or less) than they were.
They're nowhere close to that being an existential problem but it's definitely not the direction they want to be going in.
It is sure that ZZZ didn't meet expectations. Their CEO directly said with his mouth that they made mistakes in the direction of launch. There is a recorded live video, and there is no point of rebuttal.
But this news report isn't the whole picture. A drop of 23% seems acceptable. But it's a misleading number. Because the real drop occurred in June 2024, after the launch of wuwa. The drop is 50% in the later stage of last year. ZZZ's revenue in the first month was less than half genshin. It's nothing wrong. The problem is the follow-up, not the first month. The ranking of the game continues to fall. Now their ranks are completely different from the first month.
The conclusions of this report may be correct. But some of the points given aren't good enough.
But this news report isn't the whole picture. A drop of 23% seems acceptable. But it's a misleading number. Because the real drop occurred in June 2024, after the launch of wuwa. The drop is 50% in the later stage of last year. ZZZ's revenue in the first month was less than half genshin. It's nothing wrong. The problem is the follow-up, not the first month. The ranking of the game continues to fall. Now their ranks are completely different from the first month.
The conclusions of this report may be correct. But some of the points given aren't good enough.
