miHoYo has done the quizzical act of introducing HoYoverse – a seemingly new branding for the company, with a focus on global expansion.
In a new blog post today, the creators of Genshin Impact and Honkai Impact 3rd gave a buzzword-laden explanation of Hoyoverse that make it sound like yet another “metaverse” project.
“Our mission in establishing HoYoverse is to create a vast and content-driven virtual world that integrates games, anime, and other diverse types of entertainment, which will provide players with a high level of freedom and immersion,” said Haoyu Cai, co-founder and CEO of HoYoverse.
“We will continue to focus on long-term operation strategies, consistent technical research, and innovation in a variety of fields, including artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and pipeline construction, to ensure that sufficient content is created to meet the expectations of players worldwide for a virtual world experience.”
That being said, it’s never outright confirmed that HoYoverse is anything more than just a brand name change for miHoYo, likely to facilitate them having more than one killer app on the market right now.
The official Genshin Impact YouTube channel has even reuploaded the version 2.5 trailer for the game, where the only major change is replacing the miHoYo branding at the start of the trailer with a HoYoverse logo instead.
It’s not a brand change for nothing though- the shift over to the new title comes with a greater commitment to their overseas studios, as they hire teams on a global level.
“HoYoverse will expand its content production, technology research, and publishing duties through operations in offices in Montreal, Los Angeles, Singapore, Tokyo, and Seoul. With global talent and employees located around the world, HoYoverse will continue to research and develop cutting-edge technologies to enhance its capacities and capabilities to provide high-quality content that enhances and optimizes the player experience.”, the statement reads.
It should be noted that HoYoverse is also the former name of Cognosphere, the current miHoYo-owned overseas publisher for Genshin Impact based in Singapore.