The latest Honkai instalment is available on Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android and Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating systems, and will later be ported to Sony Interactive Entertainment’s PlayStation 4 and 5 game consoles.
Alibaba Cloud’s long-standing ties with miHoYo underscores the infrastructure service provider’s role in supporting the international expansion of China-developed games, which was highlighted by the acclaimed debut of Genshin Impact in September 2020.
The partnership between Alibaba Cloud and miHoYo started more than a decade ago, when the video game developer was founded by three Shanghai Jiao Tong University students – Cai Haoyu, Liu Wei and Luo Yuhao.
Alibaba Cloud founder Wang Jian and eight other company executives paid a visit to miHoYo’s Shanghai office soon after the developer established its operations. Wang told the miHoYo team that they needed to “fly in the sky along with our customers”, according to a 2020 report by Chinese media Tech Planet.
Cloud computing services enable companies to buy, sell, lease or distribute a range of software and other digital resources as an on-demand service over the internet, just like electricity from a power grid. These resources are managed inside data centres.
When Houkai Gakuen, the first instalment of the Honkai seiries, was launched in 2012, miHoYo deployed two servers via Alibaba Cloud to tap into cutting-edge online networking technologies, according to the Tech Planet report.
Racks of servers at a data centre operated by Alibaba Cloud, e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding’s cloud computing services subsidiary. Photo: Handout
Eight years later, when the company released Genshin Impact, all of its five regional servers – covering the US, Europe, Asia, and mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan – were housed inside Alibaba Cloud’s data centres.
At the end of last year, Genshin Impact recorded US$4 billion in global revenue to make it one of the most successful video games of all time, carving out a new era of growth for China-developed titles.
That success enabled miHoYo to challenge the likes of Tencent Holdings and NetEase in China, the world’s largest video gaming market, and around the world.
Following the release of Honkai: Star Rail, miHoYo’s mobile gaming revenue increased by 45 per cent in April from March, overtaking NetEase to become the second-highest-grossing mobile games publisher in China, behind industry leader Tencent, according to app analytics firm Sensor Tower.
Alibaba Cloud has also helped video game developers Perfect World and XD make content upgrades to their games through their overseas-based servers, the Hangzhou-based company said in 2022.
Alibaba Cloud remained the top cloud infrastructure services provider in mainland China last year, with a 36 per cent share of the market’s US$30.3 billion overall revenue, according to research firm Canalys.
