On February 14, Tsai Haoyu, co-founder of MihaYou, announced the new brand HoYoverse.
Although the new brand is mainly aimed at overseas markets, it has triggered a heated discussion among domestic players. And behind this action, I also see more.
1, former universe
At the moment of HoYoverse's announcement, most people's first reaction to seeing the word composition form of HoYo+Verse is that Mihayou is going to engage in a "metaverse"! And it came up with an interesting name – The Flickering Universe.
Indeed, since Facebook changed its name to Meta and made a high-profile march into the metaverse, the concept seems to have become a new outlet. Especially for game companies, creating an immersive virtual world for players is undoubtedly the ultimate goal of imaginative space.
With the size and technical strength of Miha's tour, it is not impossible to enter the metaverse field. But in my opinion, in fact, the possibility of doing a metaverse is not high, at least it is certain that there will be no related product launches in a short period of time.
First of all, the metaverse is still just a forward concept, even if Facebook, which has its own VR device as a support, has not yet come up with a mature plan. Even though Miha you may actually be exploring this aspect, it's still a long way off before we hug and cuddle with our favorite characters in the virtual world.
As players, we can have a good imagination of Mihayou's metaverse, but we don't have to look forward to it too much.
2. Common worldview
Instead of the "metaverse", the hoYoverse's naming form actually reminds me of the Nasuverse ( Nasu universe ) , the "moon world" constructed by the authors of the Fate series. I don't know if they were inspired by the word Nasuvese when naming the new brand (laughs).
The common worldview of the moon world originated from "Night of magic", and later "The Realm of Emptiness", "Moon Ji", "Fate" and its derivative works, the background age and details of the story may be different, but the story stage is the same world view. Further, the moon world can be more systematically divided into "Fate world" and "moon world". The characters under the two branches of history will not be much different, but there will be differences in experience and abilities.
The biggest charm of the moon world is that when Type-Moon merges all of its major works into a unified worldview, it will have a cascading effect. The disconnection and interlocking of works allows players and audiences not to be limited to a single work, but to become a cluster of Type-Moon companies.
The help this format gives to the game is also obvious, especially Fate/Grand Order.
The huge character lineup gives the game a huge communication advantage before it is launched, and the linkage of its own works is the only way to attract players to spend thousands of dollars every time.
Of course, it's not just Type-Moon that plays this common worldview universe like a fire, Marvel has already tasted the sweetness in the movie universe.
Mihayou's current focus on the game series are "Original God", "Crash" and "Undetermined Event Book", if you really want to open up the worldview to some extent, "Original God" and "Crash" series are undoubtedly easier and more valuable to combine.
I believe that there are also many players who like these two series, and will hope that the characters on both sides can be connected in some deeper form, rather than just staying at the level of linkage.
However, "Original God" has a very large new content update plan in the future, and the next step in the "Crash" series is "Crash Star Dome Orbit".
Therefore, it is more difficult to open up the worldview of both sides in a short period of time, and there is no strong urgency. Perhaps in the future, we can emulate Nasuvese and make the "world of protothes" and the "world of collapse" two branches of history under a unified worldview. It's just a guess, but I believe that this is definitely worth trying, and it is also a direction worth looking forward to.
3. Create a new image
After the announcement of HoYoverse, the overseas brand logo related to MihaYou, whether it is a website address, LOGO or game icon, has been completely replaced from the original MiHYo to HoYoverse.
Obviously, HoYoverse is undertaking more of a new brand image created by Mihayou for overseas game operations at this stage, which is less of the original grounded feeling and changes towards a more high-end and more compelling direction.
All along, the impression of Mihayou in the minds of players has always been deeply bound to related elements such as the second dimension and otaku culture. Even the English slogan is the same as in China, "TECH OTAKUS SAVE THE WORLD", that is, "Tech House Saves the World".
With the renaming of HoYoverse, this slogan was quietly erased, which further demonstrated Mihayou's determination in the matter of overseas brand image conversion.
4. Conclusion
"Our mission in founding HoYoverse is to create a grand, content-driven virtual world where games, animations and multiple other entertainment genres converge to provide players with a high degree of freedom and immersion.
This is what HoYoverse said in the official announcement.
Although vague and vague, in addition to the certain direction of "brand image transformation", "metaverse", "common world view", "cross-media content", etc. are actually all included, and these are more valuable for domestic players.
Of course, it's hard to get a glimpse of which direction has the highest priority, but let's keep looking forward to it, and hoping that HoYoverse represents more than just changing the logo on a few icons.