Even if you are quite negative about gachage, (and god knows I am) you can't deny that MiHoYo hasn't failed yet.

After kicking down the market door (and subsequently dominating the market) in 2020 with a little game called "Genshin Impact," as you may know, MiHoYo continued to create turn-based RPGs with the same legendary polish through "Honkai Star Rail."

It's still early days, but the action RPG "Zenless Zone Zero," released a little over a year after the debut of "Honkai," is on track to score a hat trick. According to the game's official Twitter account, "Zenless Zone Zero" has already surpassed 50 million downloads worldwide:

"Since its release, 'Zenless Zone Zero' has reached 50 million downloads worldwide. Never before has a city that once existed only in the hopes and dreams of our development team been as vibrant as it is today. Your patience and support have made New Eridu what it is today."

The number of people who liked it enough to spend the money is another matter, but there is no denying that the interest is certainly there - $50 million is the equivalent of 3 Norwegian, 5.5 London, and 1.3 California.

To put that in perspective, World of Warcraft peaked at about 12 million subscribers with Wrath of the Lich King; Steam's 300,000 concurrent users for Helldivers 2, for example, are just shy of that number. Fortnite reached about 6 million concurrent subscribers last year.

Now, of course, the number of downloads is not the same as the number of concurrent players, and it is likely that the majority of "ZZZ" users play a little, give the bad guys a run for their money, and never play again.

What is more interesting is whether MiHoYo will have trouble expanding its finite audience across all three titles: there may be a lot of people who are enthusiastic about ZZZ, but they are also players of "Genshikai Ibunroku" and have already played likely to be.

Granted, "World of Warcraft" has actually succeeded in thinning the waters by simultaneously running things like "Season of Discovery," "Classic," and "WoW Remix" and offering players different ways to engage with the game The company is also working on a new game that will be released in the near future. Similarly, MiHoYo may not actually care if some players leave Genshin and Honkai, as long as the money goes to the collective.

Concerns about gacha exclusivity notwithstanding, I have not yet played the game myself, and my review is still in progress. However, Mollie Taylor, a fan of Honkai Star Rail and fellow PC Gamer writer, played a preview build earlier this month and, despite "not liking the parry combat at all," was concerned by the lack of exploration, but its action game-like action game style, even though she "doesn't like parry combat at all" and was concerned about the lack of exploration.