HoYoverse and other devs plan to build an anime game district in Shanghai

HoYoverse is seemingly teaming up with fellow gacha game developers like Hypergryph and Manjuu to build an entire city block in Shanghai that is inspired by Tokyo’s famous Akihabara, essentially the holy site of otaku culture. 

Photos from a presentation event at which a visual plan of the district was shown off appeared on Chinese social media site Weibo. According to the picture, the district is planned to be 1 km in length and to start out at HoYoverse’s brand-new headquarters located close to Caohejing development zone. 2,000 square meters of IP-related artworks, stores, a theater, a performance stage, and an anime museum are apparently set to be located along the route to begin with, leaving space to be filled in the future.

HoYoverse’s Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, and Zenless Zone Zero are three of the biggest gacha games on the market when it comes to revenue and the company has been reinvesting profits not only in research and development, but also various other projects – among them the creation of an experimental nuclear fusion reactor. Frankly, building a city block seems to be a more “normal” use of funds compared to that.

Shanghai is one of the centers of China’s game industry and this project appears to be carried by many of the major players located in town. Hypergryph, for example, is known for Arknights, while Manjuu is the company behind Azur Lane and the upcoming Azur Promilia.

Other tech companies involved with this land development project are Giant Interactive, Lilith Technology, Haowancheng, Coconut Island Games, Yostar Games, Taomee, Yoozoo, and Infold, according to another photo from the event.

Together, the companies seem to aim at reinforcing Shanghai’s position as a new center of the otaku culture in China, in turn boosting their own standing within that scene.