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Published in September 2020, Genshin Impact has quickly shot up the rank among the top-grossing mobile games worldwide. In May 2025, the mobile app generated approximately **** million U.S. dollars in in-app purchases. The open-world action RPG title uses a gacha game monetization system and is available for several platforms and claims the title of the fastest gaming app to reach 5 billion U.S. dollars in global player spending.

Anime-style open world online games

Inspired by Genshin’s success story, many other app publishers have tried to recapture the game’s success. Chinese app developers, in particular, have been homing in on the anime-style open world fantasy genre, though none of these releases have managed to reach Genshin’s level of impact. Tower of Fantasy, developed by Hotta Studio, was published in December 2021, making it one of the earlier entries of the genre. Not putting all its eggs in one basket, Genshin publisher miHoYo also released another game with similar mechanics to GI, the space fantasy RPG Honkai: Star Rail. While not reaching Genshin’s runaway financial success, Honkai: Star Rail has managed to prove itself a financial success in its own right.

In May 2024, Kuro Games released the highly anticipated Wuthering Waves. Wuthering Waves’ mobile app accumulated over 20 million U.S. dollars in IAP revenues within 10 days of release, showing that gaming audiences are still hungry for open world online games. 

The success of online anime RPGs is not guaranteed

Despite the popularity of the genre, games in this segment are not automatically poised for success. Japanese publisher Bandai Namco also created an anime MMORPG, Blue Protocol. Originally planned for a worldwide multi-platform release with Amazon as a global publisher in 2023, the game received a Japan-only launch in the summer of 2023, the Korean launch was moved to 2024 and then infinitely paused. Despite a strong launch, the game has fizzled out and Japanese gamers have criticized Blue Protocol for the lack of engaging features, bugs, and lack of serious content updates, highlighting Bandai’s inability to tap into the genre and keep up with online gaming trends despite its status as an AAA-level video gaming company.