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Microsoft kicked itself when it saw the stratospheric success of Genshin Impact two years ago after it ended talks to secure it for its own consoles, and now, it's looking for a counterpart to offer to the Xbox community.
The report from Reuters alleges that Microsoft has dedicated a team to reach out to Chinese developers as games from this region become more and more popular with Western gamers. "Chinese game developers are trying to standardise their development tools, create advanced production processes, invest in really large-scale teams," argued Daniel Ahmad, senior analyst at Niko Partners, in a statement. "Ultimately, that helps provide them with the competitive edge to reach a broad audience both in terms of geography and platforms."
As well as this team, Microsoft has broadened what its subscription service Xbox Game Pass offers to PC and mobile devices in order to show Chinese companies that it is experienced with cross-platform capabilities. The stats from Genshin Impact is evidence enough that Microsoft should be interested in creating an exclusive counterpart for those on Xbox and PC, and apparently, Microsoft "regretted" abandoning talks with studio miHoYo at the early stages of Genshin Impact's development.
"Picking up Genshin Impact made Sony a lot of money," said one source. The actual amount of console revenue generated from Genshin Impact players on PlayStation is not public, however, Sensor Tower calculated that $3 billion in global lifetime spending has been raked in on the mobile version of the RPG. Crikey. There's always one that got away.