Genshin Impact

What the review sites say

Read directly from each source rather than aggregated from a third party, for the PC version. Sample sizes differ by orders of magnitude between critics and players, which matters more than the gap in the scores.

Not published yet. These figures are deliberately blank. Metacritic, OpenCritic and Steam all block automated collection, so every number here has to be read by hand off the source page, dated, and re-checked before this page goes live. Fill in externalScores in data/games.json, set checkedBy and checkedOn, and they will render.

Aggregators, individual outlets and players are answering different questions. Critics score a game at launch on a review build. Player scores accumulate for years and absorb every patch, price change and server outage, which is why the two diverge most on live-service releases. Read every number next to its sample size.

Method. Scores are read from each source page by a named editor, on a stated date, for the platform named above. They are not pulled from an API and not aggregated from another site. Third-party review platforms block automated collection, so each figure is re-checked by hand before publication rather than trusted from an old file. Not yet read for this entry.

What players actually argue about

Community discussion is almost bimodal: the free content and world design draw genuine affection, while the systems governing how much of it you may play per day, and what it costs to pull a character, draw sustained anger.

Citations pending. The two lists above are our editor's summary of themes that recur across community discussion. They are characterisations, not quotes, and nothing here is attributed to any individual. Before publishing, add the specific threads you read to community.threads with their URL, score and the date you read them, so a reader can check the summary against the source.

Method. We read the largest discussion threads on the game's main subreddit and note themes that appear repeatedly across independent threads, not single strong opinions. Upvotes measure agreement among people who are already engaged enough to post, which is not the same as agreement among everyone who played. We never quote an individual without linking the thread.

Where to buy and what it costs

Disclosure. Some links below are affiliate links, marked in the table. If you buy through one we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Affiliate arrangements never influence a score, a ranking, or which stores appear here. Official first-party stores carry no affiliate programme and are listed anyway.

MSRP is the publisher list price in the United States and does not change. The current column is filled from a live price check and is empty until one has run.

Stores marked as key resellers sell activation keys rather than the game itself. Prices are usually lower. Regional key restrictions, no publisher support, and limited recourse if a key fails are the trade-off, so weigh the saving against that.

Method. MSRP is the publisher list price in the United States, excluding tax, and does not change. The current column is a live price read from each store and is only shown with a check date attached. Regional pricing differs substantially. We list official first-party stores whether or not they pay us, and we mark every affiliate link and every key reseller. No live price check has run for this entry. Full pricing methodology.

Where it sits on the grid

Price history

No history yet. This chart fills itself once the hourly price check has been running. Each run appends one point, so the graph becomes useful after a few days and genuinely informative after a sale cycle. Run npm run prices with an IsThereAnyDeal key, or npm run prices -- --demo to preview the chart with clearly-labelled synthetic data.

Trailers and gameplay

Method. Every video here is embedded from the rights holder's own channel, verified by resolving the ID through YouTube's oEmbed endpoint and checking the channel against an allowlist before it is stored. We do not embed reuploads: a copy on a third-party channel is someone else's infringement, and linking it makes it partly ours. Embeds use youtube-nocookie.com, so no tracking cookie is set until a reader presses play.

How it was made, and what it cost to make

Announced in mid 2019 and released just over a year later, an unusually short public runway for a game of this scale.

Its launch drew accusations of copying Breath of the Wild, which faded as the game established its own systems. It has been in continuous development since, with the live team growing substantially after launch.

Timeline

1. 1 June 2019First teasedAnnounced publicly, usually with no gameplay
2. 1 January 2020Gameplay revealedFirst look at how it actually plays
3. 28 September 2020ReleasedFirst platform release

On budgets. We list a budget only when a primary source stated one: a regulatory filing, a court document, an executive on the record, or a published post-mortem. Most figures circulating for big-budget games are estimates repeated until they read as fact. Where nobody credible has said a number, this field stays undisclosed rather than carrying a guess.

How many people bought it

No sales figures recorded. Publishers announce these irregularly, in press releases, quarterly filings and milestone posts, and the wording differs every time. Add each announcement to sales.milestones with its date, who said it and a source URL, and this section renders a chart of the run-up. We do not estimate sales, and we do not repeat a figure we cannot link.

Method. Sales figures come from publisher announcements, quarterly filings or platform milestone posts. They are claims by an interested party, not audited numbers, and the wording matters: "sold" can mean units shipped to retail rather than units bought by players, and "players" counts anyone who launched the game including on a subscription.

Recent news

No news items yet. Add dated entries to news[] with a source and URL. Keep each one to a couple of sentences in your own words with a link out. Republishing another outlet's article in full is both a copyright problem and a scraped-content problem under AdSense, and a link plus your own summary is worth more to a reader anyway.