As miHoyo evolves into a global company, a new brand with explicit Metaverse overtones might spur its development
Chinese video game developer miHoyo (Chinese: 米哈游), who gained worldwide fame for its game "Genshin Impact" (Chinese: 原神), rebranded itself yesterday as HoYoverse, a move that it said aims to create an immersive virtual world experience for players across the globe, according to a company announcement.
"Our mission in establishing HoYoverse is to create a vast and content-driven virtual world that integrates diverse types of entertainment such as games and animation, which will provide players with a high level of freedom and immersion," said Cai Haoyu, co-founder and CEO of HoYoverse.
Founded in 2011 and based in Shanghai, miHoYo became world-famous since it launched games including "Genshin Impact" and "Honkai Impact 3" in recent years. As the company expands overseas, HoYoverse will be the new name for the international audience, while miHoYo will continue to be used in China.
The company also said it will expand its content production, technology research, and game publishing through offices in Montreal, Los Angeles, Singapore, Tokyo, and Seoul.
This is not the first time that miHoYo has made moves associated with the Metaverse. The company established the "Reverse Entropy Studio" in 2018, which focuses on building the virtual female character Lumi and developing brain-machine interface projects.
miHoYo also announced it had set up a joint lab with Ruijin Hospital affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine in March 2021. The two sides aimed to conduct research about treatment of depression using brain-machine interfaces.
According to public data, 33 game companies have jumped on the Metaverse bandwagon, the most famous being games such as Tencent's "ZPLAN" and ByteDance's "Restart the World."
They also dabbled in social media tools featuring the Metaverse. For instance, ByteDance launched Pixsoul and Baidu debuted its Xirang.
Nevertheless, the initial frenzy surrounding Metaverse-related concepts so far hasn't caught on since few concrete developments have been made, fueling conjecture that their vision is but some hot air.
Media reported earlier that nine companies including Qingci Games, Kuaishou and Our Palm had raced to register trademarks related to the Metaverse, and little else.