MiHoYo

Further information: miHoYo

* miHoYo
* Cognosphere
* HoYoverse

**miHoYo** (Chinese: 米哈游 *Mǐhāyóu*) is a Chinese video game development and publishing studio based in Shanghai, China. The company is the creator of various video games including *Zenless Zone Zero*, its most popular titles being *Honkai Impact 3rd* and *Genshin Impact*.

In addition to games, miHoYo has created a variety of products such as animations, comics, music, novels, and merchandise. The original music for miHoYo's media is produced by its own music studio HOYO-MiX, led by music director Jinhan "Zoe" Cai (蔡近翰).

Since February 2022, miHoYo's subsidiary **Cognosphere Pte. Ltd.** d/b/a **HoYoverse** is responsible for all of the company's global operations outside of China.

## History

> Something New, Something Exciting, Something Out of Imagination
>
> miHoYo's R&D Philosophy

miHoYo was founded in 2011 by three computer science students from Shanghai Jiao Tong University: **Wei "Forrest" Liu** (刘伟), also known as Da Wei (大伟哥), who acts as the company's general president; **Haoyu "Hugh" Cai** (蔡浩宇), the company's CEO and lead producer, and **Yuhao Luo** (罗宇皓). The three shared an interest for technology and ACG (abbreviation of "anime, comics, and games") culture.

CiCi as an undergraduate student joined the group and later became the lead artist for *Honkai Impact 3rd*. He later participated in character design for *Genshin Impact*. Tianwen was the company's first programmer.

### Timeline

* In 2011, miHoYo released their first title *FlyMe2theMoon* on the iOS platform as an indie developer.
* In 2012, **miHoYo Co., Ltd.** was registered. The first game released after the company founding was *Honkai Gakuen* on iOS platform. (Because of its 32-bit kernel, Honkai Gakuen is now hidden on App Store after iOS 12.)
* In 2014, they released *Honkai Gakuen 2* (which serves as a replacement of original *Honkai Gakuen*).
	+ The project of *Honkai Impact 3rd* was started in the same year with a 7-person team.
	+ Since then, they have seen success releasing anime-style games that primarily appealed to mobile gamers. The majority of their early titles were successful within Asia, however they would not reach global success until the release of *Honkai Impact 3rd*.
* On October 14, 2016, *Honkai Impact 3rd* was released in China.
	+ It was the first miHoYo game released worldwide. Other servers were publicly opened months later: February 22, 2017 for Japan; May 18, 2017 for Taiwan; October 17, 2017 for Korea; November 1, 2017 for South East Asia; March 28, 2018 for North America and Europe.
* On May 31, 2019, *Cooking with Valkyries*, the anime adaption of *Honkai Impact 3rd* was announced, and broadcasted starting from June 28, 2019.
* In June 2019, *Genshin Impact* was announced, and had its first Closed Beta Test on June 21.
* In July 2019, *Tears of Themis* was announced with its first PV on July 29.
* On December 18, 2019, on the NVIDIA GTC China 2019 conference, Huang Renxun disclosed miHoYo's development of a third-person shooter game code-named "Project X," which will be released in 2021 and supports ray tracing technology.
* On July 30, 2020, *Tears of Themis* was released.
* On August 4, 2020, *N0va Desktop*, miHoYo's first dynamic desktop wallpaper software, was released on PC.
* On September 15, 2020, *Genshin Impact* was released with PC technical open test, and was simultaneously released globally on September 28.
	+ *Genshin Impact* is one of their most popular games with 17 million downloads within release week and makes $6 million a day.
* On December 1, 2020, *N0va Desktop* was released on Android.
* On October 5, 2021, *Honkai: Star Rail* was announced, and had its first Closed Beta Test on October 27.
* On February 14, 2022, the HoYoverse brand was unveiled as the trade name of Cognosphere and all of miHoYo's operations outside of China were moved under this brand, with global-facing mihoyo.com subdomains redirected to hoyoverse.com subdomains (but not Chinese subdomains).

## Trivia

* Liu Wei personally explained the origin of the name **miHoYo** at the 2019 campus recruitment of Zhejiang University, that:
	+ **H** and **Y** are the initial letters of the names of the co-founders, 蔡浩宇 *Cài **H**ào**y**ǔ* and 罗宇皓 *Luó **Y**ǔ**h**ào* (while Liu Wei himself is the mascot);
	+ **HoYo** is because they thought the popular companies' names all have two letter **O**, e.g. Google, Microsoft, Facebook;
	+ **mi** is because that the name **HoYo** has already been registered by others, and they had to add more letters; they thus borrowed the **mi** from otaku's favorite — Hatsune Miku, and finally the name became **miHoYo**.

## References

1. ↑ miHoYo - About Us
2. ↑ The Adventure Comes to PlayStation®4 on September 28
3. ↑ GDC Vault - Genshin Impact: Crafting an Anime Style Open World
4. ↑ Developer Insight #4: Character Stories (I) - "Vigilant Yaksha" Xiao
5. ↑ "Honkai Impact 3rd x Neon Genesis Evangelion" Interview - "Pursuit of Dreams"
6. ↑ 每日游戏菌 (September 11, 2018). 崩坏3上线两年 老玩家们的评价集锦. *bilibili*.
7. ↑ Ye, Josh (December 5, 2018). "This hit anime schoolgirl game looks Japanese, but it's from China". *South China Morning Post*.
8. ↑ Chan, Khee Hoon (March 3, 2021). "Mobile games have quietly exploded". *Polygon*.
9. ↑ "Presenting the New Brand HoYoverse: Aiming to Provide Global Players With an Immersive Virtual World Experience". *HoYoverse*.
10. ↑ Who Exactly is Genshin Impact Developer miHoYo?, accessed November 22, 2020.
11. ↑ 【米哈游校招2019】大伟哥现场宣讲！杭州浙大校园招聘会. *bilibili*.

## External Links

* Official Website (miHoYo)
* Official Website (HoYoverse)
* bilibili
* Sina Weibo