Genshin Impact

Genshin Impact is a free-to-play open-world action RPG developed by miHoYo in Shanghai and published outside mainland China under the HoYoverse brand of Cognosphere Pte. Ltd. [5] It launched worldwide on September 28, 2020 for Windows, iOS, Android, and PlayStation 4. [5] A third-party estimate by Sensor Tower put its first-year spending on mobile app stores alone at about US$2 billion, which made it the commercial template for a generation of open-world gacha games. [4]

Characters and weapons are obtained through a gacha system called Wishes. Its numbers are published inside the game, and its pity and guarantee design has been copied, with small changes, by most large gacha games released since. [2]

Pull system

Main article: Wishes

The limited-time Character Event Wish is the main banner type. Key published rates: [2]

The rate is not flat in practice. Community statistical projects have documented a sharp rate increase beginning at roughly wish 74, commonly called soft pity. HoYoverse publishes only the base and consolidated figures, so soft pity thresholds are community-documented estimates rather than official numbers.

Pity counters persist between banners of the same type and do not reset when a banner rotates.

Featured-character guarantee

When a 5-star character is pulled without an active guarantee, there is a 50% chance it is the banner's featured character. Losing that 50/50 guarantees that the next 5-star is the featured one, so a featured character costs at most 180 wishes. [2]

Version 5.0 (August 2024) added Capturing Radiance: a lost 50/50 has a chance to convert into the featured character anyway. HoYoverse states the consolidated probability that a non-guaranteed 5-star is the featured character is 55%, and that Capturing Radiance triggers automatically after three consecutive 50/50 losses. The per-trigger probability outside that guarantee is not published. [1]

Weapon banner

The Weapon Event Wish uses a 0.7% base rate, a 1.85% consolidated rate, and an 80-wish hard pity. Each 5-star has a 75% chance to be one of the two featured weapons. The Epitomized Path system lets players designate one weapon; since Version 5.0 the designated weapon is guaranteed after one off-designation 5-star (a worst case of 160 wishes, down from 240 before the change). [2]

Other banner types

A permanent standard banner (Wanderlust Invocation) shares the 0.6%/90 structure but has no featured items. The Chronicled Wish, added in Version 4.5 (2024), offers a rotating pool of older characters and weapons with a designatable target. Version 6.7 (July 2026) introduced the Lightrace Wish, a limited pool of returning 5-star characters and their signature weapons with a designated-item guarantee; it shares pity with the Chronicled Wish.

Regulation

In January 2025 Cognosphere settled with the US Federal Trade Commission for US$20 million over its loot box marketing. The settlement bars selling loot boxes to players under 16 without parental consent and requires direct-purchase options, odds disclosure, and clearer virtual-currency pricing in the United States. [3] See gacha regulation by country for context.

Platforms and service history

Main article: Release history

A native PlayStation 5 version arrived in April 2021, and an Xbox Series X|S version in November 2024. [5] PlayStation 4 support ended on April 8, 2026, after the client was delisted in late 2025. [6] The game remains in active service on PC, mobile, PS5, and Xbox as of July 2026.