miHoYo officially revealed Nodusfall, a dark fantasy co-op action game, at Gamescom Opening Night Live 2026. Players pick a character, fine-tune their loadout, and fight tough bosses with allies, with the option to switch roles and loadouts at will. No release date, platforms, or beta dates have been announced yet.
Apple published a China-only report on October 8 titled "China App Store Ecosystem — 2025 Developer and User Value Study," authored by antitrust experts Ju Heng and Markus von Wartburg. The report says the China App Store ecosystem generates about 4 trillion yuan annually with over 95% exempt from commission, and names miHoYo and NetEase as examples of developers using web stores and DTC channels to bypass Apple Pay. It also states Chinese apps accounted for 98% of domestic App Store revenue in 2025, with 52% of Chinese developers' App Store revenue coming from overseas.
On September 28, China beat Malaysia 4-0 in the Honor of Kings final at the Nagoya Asian Games, defending the gold medal it also won at the Hangzhou Asian Games, with player Yinuo becoming the league's first and only double gold medalist. On October 8, Tencent TiMi's Delta Force announced its China server daily active users surpassed 58 million as the game marked its second anniversary. NetEase also unveiled its extreme sports competitive shooter Extreme Battlefield, with its first test set to begin on October 15.
miHoYo announced that Zenless Zone Zero version 3.3, titled Journey to the Sky, will launch on October 21 for PS5, Xbox Series, PC, and mobile. The update adds S-Rank Anomaly Agent Phoenix in the first half and S-Rank Attack Agent Severian in the second half, plus new mech combat gameplay with switchable melee and ranged attacks. It also brings system improvements such as Fairy team recommendations and Agent tutorial videos, with check-in events offering 10 Encrypted Master Tapes and 10 Boopons.
Xiaohongshu's RED LAND event ran October 2-6 on Fuxing Island in Shanghai's Yangpu district, expanding from 80,000 to 150,000 square meters with over 160 game and anime IPs and more than 80 booths, both doubled from last year. miHoYo's Dawei Ge attended to promote the new game "Starry Valley," joining stage activities, a float parade, and meeting a physical robot of the game's AI cafe owner "Naluo," inviting players to try the game at public beta. The four miHoYo titles "Genshin Impact," "Honkai: Star Rail," "Zenless Zone Zero," and "Starry Valley" appeared together offline for the first time.
Bilibili's self-developed vertical-screen pet-catching game Shines! Lumi generated 50 million yuan in its first week on the app market, entering the iOS top-grossing TOP 20 before climbing into the top ranks of WeChat mini games. The game emphasizes a hand-drawn art style, vertical-screen idle play and automatic pet catching, with a core loop that lets players experience collecting within about five minutes. Bilibili supported the dual-platform launch with in-site promotion, KOL content and holiday ad spending, validating its self-developed game strategy.
China's National Press and Publication Administration published September approvals covering 206 domestic games and 3 imported games, plus 15 licence changes. Among the domestic approvals were 185 mobile titles, 2 client titles, 16 mobile and client titles, 2 mobile, client and web titles, and 1 game-machine title. miHoYo's Yuanchu Zhi Jie was approved for mobile and client, after an official QA said it would support PC at launch, while Zulong's Lord of the Mysteries: The Fool is a cross-platform RPG card game.
RED LAND, Xiaohongshu's open-world adventure island event, opened on October 2 on Fuxing Island in Shanghai's Yangpu district and runs through October 6. The site doubled from 80,000 to 150,000 square meters, with over 160 game and anime IPs and the world's first large-scale game and anime float parade featuring about 150 community-registered users. Official figures say all five ticket rounds sold out in an average of 20.6 seconds each, and 80% of ticket buyers came from outside Shanghai.
At the 2026 Yunqi Conference's Alibaba Cloud AI Gaming Forum, Zheng Yinhe, head of miHoYo's Honkai series AI NPC & Gameplay tech team, shared the company's AI practices in gameplay, development, and AI research. The "AI Pom-Pom" launched in Honkai: Star Rail version 4.2 supported story Q&A, guide queries, long-term memory, and emotional feedback, and kept up with the game's 42-day major version updates, though it is now offline. miHoYo also built its own Agent platform EchoX and teased a new tabletop gameplay where AI characters compete autonomously.
miHoYo's Li Yanran, AI lead for Star Valley, spoke at the 2026 Yunqi Conference's Alibaba Cloud AI gaming forum about the game's AI NPCs. All AI NPCs share one brain-inspired Agent architecture and a "super-intelligence memory system" that lets characters share memories and retain them across platforms, while a "multi-teacher online distillation" technique puts different personas into a single model. Li also said miHoYo is trying to enable self-evolving Agents in the game so players and NPCs can grow together.
China's National Press and Publication Administration released its September 2026 approval list for domestic and imported online games, granting licenses to 215 titles, including 206 domestic and 3 imported games. miHoYo's Yuanchu Zhi Jie and Guimi Zhi Zhu: Yuzhe were among the approved titles.
Tencent is reportedly running a secret beta for an AI game companion product called "Eciyuan," offering digital human characters, voice chat and real-time screen recognition. Players can pick male or female companions with different personas and enable a game companion mode, with the beta free for now. The product also includes a desktop pet feature, and its interface shows an energy system tied to conversation turns or companion time, though launch timing and final pricing remain undisclosed.
At miHoYo's 2027 campus recruitment talk at Shanghai Jiao Tong University on September 23, 2026, co-founder Liu Wei said miHoYo would be a significant player among Chinese large-model teams within 2 to 3 years, reiterating a plan to invest up to 100 billion yuan in AI over three years. He said the flagship new title Varsapura will have a test by the end of this year, with Cai Haoyu as producer and Unreal Engine 5, and that its main story introduces the world while side stories carry the weight. On Genshin Impact he only said something big is coming, without details, and said older titles like Honkai Gakuen 2 and Honkai Impact 3rd will gradually be sidelined while Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero can sustain ongoing operation.
Chuapp rounds up the week's industry news: TGS2026 opened on September 17 with a five-day run through September 21, featuring 759 exhibitors and 3,946 booths, while Chinese exhibitors fell to 93 from last year. Gamma Data's August report put China's domestic game revenue at 31.627 billion yuan, up 8.08% year on year, with Lord of the Mysteries topping 100 million yuan in first-month revenue. Phantom Blade Zero passed 3 million wishlists, Aniimo hit over 120,000 concurrent Steam players on its PC launch day, and Wardogs sold over 2 million copies within five days of its early access release.
A Shanghai court ordered an unnamed generative AI developer to pay MiHoYo ¥750,000 (about $112,000) after finding it improperly reproduced and sold the voices of Genshin Impact characters. The Paper reported the case as Shanghai's first involving unfair competition over AI recreations of another company's voiceover work. MiHoYo said the defendant replicated the voices of 63 Genshin Impact characters and used the game's images and story animations to advertise and sell its voice packs; the defendant was ordered on June 30 to stop distributing the assets and pay damages, and later withdrew its appeal.
Wuthering Waves' 3.6 main story "烟云幽远心剑鸣" has Qingxiao choose to reconcile with her inner demon rather than defeat or submit to it. The development team says the key to long-term operation is making players trust the game is still growing, not relying on a single major version or crossover. Version 3.6 also adds sword-flight and sword-intent puzzle mechanics, and the official team says it will optimize performance across all platforms by switching programming languages, raising iOS performance by over 10 frames on average.
miHoYo launched the AI companion product BSide: Olivia Lin on Steam on July 13, 2026, and announced on August 11 that it would shut down at the end of August, only 29 days after launch. After the shutdown, a player named Ying Rushi started a group to collect letters and organize Lin Li's persona and reply rules, aiming to recreate her with prompts in common AI tools. Two days after the online version went offline, he released a GitHub open-source project that restores Lin Li's local letter service.
HoYoverse detailed Honkai: Star Rail Version 4.3, titled The Lethe Below the Living, which launches June 1 and continues the Planarcadia arc with new playable character Mortenax Blade. The 5-Star Fire-Type swordsman on the Path of Nihility uses a Bounded Field to enter an enhanced state that increases enemy damage taken and unlocks a stronger Ultimate. The update also adds a designable Wispae Amusement Park, the Starward Mode, and a Fate/Stay Night [Unlimited Blade Works] collaboration this summer.
HoYoverse revealed Genshin Impact's next update, Luna 7 (Truth Amongst the Pages of Purana), which launches on May 20. Its new Archon Quest returns to Sumeru with Nahida absent and a figure resembling Il Dottore, offering up to 560 Primogems and Nicole's Ascension Materials plus a new Weekly Boss. Nicole Reeyn is the first playable Hexenzirkel member, a 5-Star Pyro Catalyst support who boosts party ATK and generates a shield, joined by 5-Star Cryo polearm Lohen and 4-Star Anemo catalyst Prune, with Nicole and Lohen in the first half and Prune in the second.
Petit Planet, HoYoverse's first family-friendly social sim, has launched its second beta test and is being compared closely to Animal Crossing. It swaps the usual desert island for a desert planet in space, but the preview finds few new ideas and no confirmed release window. The beta also flags content made with generative AI, with NPC real-time dialogue likened to the 20-year-old indie game Façade.
HoYoverse announced that Zenless Zone Zero Version 2.8, New Eridan Sunset, launches on May 6 with two new S-Rank Agents, Promeia and Starlight-Billy, plus a new Wind attribute enemy and the Vortex mechanic. The game will also come to Steam, making it HoYoverse's first title on Valve's platform, though no Steam date was given. Version 2.8 is the final chapter of Season 2, with Lucia and Orphie & Magus re-runs, a Marcel Bootopia event and a new Hoshimi Miyabi outfit.
HoYoverse revealed during a Special Program that Honkai: Star Rail Version 4.2, titled So Laughed the Masses, arrives April 22 with two new playable characters, Silver Wolf LV.999 and Evanescia, plus the Elation Trailblazer variant. The update brings six character reruns across two Warp phases, buffs for Firefly, Huohuo, Seele and Welt, and new events including Cosmic Data Roaming and a Currency Wars expansion. The third anniversary celebration begins in-game on April 26 with 20 total pulls for regular logins and a 1,600 Stellar Jades blessing card, while Huohuo and Robin join the Stellar Convergence store permanently.
HoYoverse announced that Petit Planet's Stardrift Test will begin on April 21 on PC, Android, and iOS. The closed beta adds new Neighbors, an updated Starsea Voyage with a map for traveling to other Islets, and more at the Galactic Bazaar. Sign-ups are open on the official website, but only a portion of applicants will be invited, and the game still has no release date.
Genshin Impact's next major update, Luna 6, titled Song of the Welkin Moon: Rondo - Augured Homecoming, launches on April 8 and expands the original Mondstadt region northward. It adds Dornman Port and the floating Temple of Space, which is made up of realms inspired by Liyue, Sumeru and other Teyvat civilizations, along with a new mechanic for manipulating space to reveal hidden paths and a new boss, Watcher: Fallen Vigil. The update's only new character is Linnea, a 5-Star Geo Bow user who converts Hydro-Crystallize reactions into Lunar-Crystallize reactions and has a companion named Lumi; Chasca gets her first rerun in the first phase of Event Wishes, while the second phase focuses on Nefer and Lauma.
HoYoverse detailed Zenless Zone Zero Version 2.7, subtitled Champions Never Fall to the Past, which arrives March 24 with two new Agents and the Hollow Champion competition. The new Agents are Cissia, an S-Rank Electric Attack Agent from the Metropolitan Order Division, and Nangong Yu, the Angels of Delusion captain and lead dancer, an S-Rank Ether Stun Agent. Yidhari and Seed return, and the update adds themed events at Lumina Square's Simmer Hot Pot Restaurant plus updated Simulated Battle Trial mechanics and enemy line-ups.
Honkai: Star Rail Version 4.1, titled Unraveled for Daybreak, launches on March 25 and continues the Planarcadia story arc. The update runs four weeks instead of the usual six to rebalance the schedule after the extra-long Version 3.8, shortening the banners for Ashveil and reruns of Hyacine and Boothill. It also adds the Wispae War Saga activity, a new Arcadian Chronicles phase in the Divergent Universe, and double rewards for Planar Fissure and Garden of Plenty.
Genshin Impact's Luna 5 update is now live, and in-game purchases have been disabled on PS4 as of today, with the Luna 6 update around April 8 set to end access to the PS4 version entirely. The PS4 version has been delisted since last September, and the game remains available on PS5, Xbox Series, PC and mobile. Luna 5 returns the main story to Mondstadt and adds a Mondstadt-themed Chronicled Wish banner, with Varka becoming playable for the first time.
Genshin Impact's next major update, Luna 5 (Song of the Welkin Moon: Variation - Homeward, He Who Caught the Wind), launches February 25 and takes the story back to Mondstadt. Varka debuts as a playable 5-Star Anemo Claymore character with a dual-wield combat style that deals two types of Elemental damage at once. The version's reruns include Flins in the first phase and Skirk and Escoffier in the second, along with the return of the Chronicled Wish for Mondstadt characters.
HoYoverse announced during its Special Program that Honkai: Star Rail Version 4.0 arrives February 13, adding the new world Planarcadia and two new 5-Star characters, General Yao Guang and Sparxie. Starting February 26, Kafka and Blade skins join the Fortnite Item Shop, and downloading the game on the Epic Games Store and joining themed activities earns the Blade outfit for free. Players who log in after launch get 20 free pulls and a new outfit for Ruan Mei, while the Yao Guang fortune event offers 1,600 Stellar Jades and a free 5-Star character selector arrives later.