Biggest Chinese Game of the Year Might Have Just Launched

Wuthering Waves is now available on mobile and PC, with more than 32 million pre-registrations in its pocket!

Wuthering Waves just released with more than 32 million pre-registrations behind it!

The game is now available on iOS, Android and PC. PS4 and PS5 versions are also expected in the future.

The F2P Chinese game from Guangzhou-based studio Kuro Games is an open-world gatcha action RPG in the vein of Genshin Impact.

Hyped as a potential/serious competitor to miHoYo’s Genshin Impact, I think this launch is of particular interest in part because:

- While Genshin Impact became one of the most popular F2P games around the world in the last few years, many would have assumed that many copy-cats would follow from different studios.

- Not only did we not witness that many worthy-of-notice games inspired by Genshin (sorry Tower of Fantasy, you did try), we have now reached a point where perhaps its most serious competitor will come from another Chinese studio as well!

- While the gaming industry at large obviously took notice of Genshin Impact and its...impact and huge success, it is as if "no one" really dared to try to reproduce its formula.
It is an ambitious open world game with high production values that are usually more common in the domain of premium full-priced games, so that partially explains it.
Besides, the one more serious contender who tried, was also a Chinese game: Hotta Studio’s “Tower of Infinity”, published by Tencent’s Level Infinite.

-Still, in an industry that often operates by the motto of "they did that and it's working for them, so let's do the same!", it is surprising that Genshin was "allowed" to exist almost in isolation for all this time, and only other Chinese studios stepped up to challenge it, in particular now with Wuthering Waves.

It’s hard to predict how successful the game will be, but pre-release indicators at least were very encouraging. After all, 32 million pre-registrations represent a wider possible audience than some of the biggest games released so far this year, such as Helldivers 2 or Palworld. We'll see what happens next...