Hoyoverse made Genshin at an initial budget of $100M, which officially made it the 12th in the list of big budget games. The next year, they issued a statement mentioning that it costs $200M per year to produce new content and keep everything running on schedule.

The numbers do make sense because they have 700+ people on this IP. Considering an average yearly wage of $75K (IT pays a lot more than this), it makes it a minimum of 50M+ per year in salaries. Then there is full voice acting in four languages, marketing, production design, servers and a lot more.

The closest official competitor will be Star Citizen, which is probably never gonna release and Cyberpunk 2077 which comes in third now. The first Destiny may be a close competitor as the devs have unofficially stated that it cost them $500M to 'develop the franchise', whatever that means.

Return on Investment: Considering that they have spent 500M until now and they make $3.7B per year, the ROI is around 1380%. Meaning for every dollar that they put in, they get back ~$15, which is just f**ing crazy!!

If Genshin is going to keep this level of quality to the end of this Teyvat chapter (4 years from now), I'm all in for this ride. I've spent only $60 on this game in the last 2 years and I've gotten more fun out of it than many other games combined. So yeah, I'm happy for and very jealous of Hoyoverse for this masterpiece. Congrats and screw you lads!

Edit ('cause other subs called this a P2W scam): $60 got me 25 five star pulls and 400 wishes saved. I have 41/51 characters, all of which are fully built with their levelled talents, unique weapons & artifacts. I only want Nahida and Kokomi now, for whom I have enough wishes saved while Mona will continue to evade me forever :|

Edit 1: Guys. Please use your critical thinking skills. I did not think that I'd have to explain this one but I did not spend $60 at once for my 25 five stars pulls(14 char, 8 cons, 3 weapon). I mean... Duh! It was the amount I had spent over the last couple years on Welkins while I played the game normally.

Edit 2 (For people who say the game is dying lol): Genshin Impact is 67% of the global gacha market (from China) in Q1 2022 and Hoyo holds 70% of the total market share including their other titles.