Genshin Impact set to cost double its initial budget for each year of ongoing development

Developer miHoYo reckons that on-going development will cost $200 million per year.

The budget for free-to-play smash hit Genshin Impact was reportedly $100 million.

That's according to the president of developer miHoYo Cai Haoyu, who told Chinese publication 16p - as translated by Twitter user AeEntropy - that it cost the firm $100 million to make the game. Furthermore, the exec reckons that Genshin Impact will have a development budget of $200 million for every year that the project is being worked on.

While we're now used to the games-as-a-service business model, this is a look at just how much investment companies need to make in order to keep these projects going.

At the moment, 700 people are working on Genshin Impact alone, roughly 29% of miHoYo's 2,400 total staff. Moving forward, the company plans to release a new product every three-to-four years. miHoYo also intends to open a research and development centre in North America.

Genshin Impact launched in September for mobile devices, as well as PC and PS4. Within four days of release, the game had been downloaded 17 million times on mobile alone, while it was estimated that the title had racked up $50 million in revenue in its first week. According to research firm SuperData, Genshin Impact was the highest-grossing game by digital revenue for the month of September.

Within its first fortnight, Genshin Impact had passed $100 million in revenue and was apparently the biggest new games IP launch for a Chinese developer.

Genshin Impact is coming to PS5, as well as Nintendo Switch, at some point in the future. The game runs at 60 frames-per-second on PS5 thanks to backwards compatibility with the PS4 version.