miHoYo Announces HarmonyOS Native Development — But Players Won't Forget the Nintendo Switch Promise From 4 Years Ago

miHoYo just can't stop announcing new platforms! This time the target is Huawei's HarmonyOS. The company officially declared it's developing native HarmonyOS apps and even leaned into the infamous "launch" meme (启动梗, qǐdòng — a slang term mocking gamers' obsessive hype for starting games) in its marketing. NGA forums immediately erupted.

The original poster captioned it "Official playing the launch meme, two swords combined — everyone's happy." But the comment section was anything but wholesome.

The top-voted comment cut straight to the bone: "Maybe finish what you hyped up four years ago first." The attached image pointed to miHoYo's long-forgotten Nintendo Switch port promise — announced back in 2020, and four years later, there's been zero gameplay footage, zero updates, nothing. Another player quipped, "Once NS2 drops, it'll be 'on' alright" — a sarcastic play on the Switch announcement never being 'on' anything.

Technical skepticism ran deep too. One commenter asked bluntly: "Does this actually mean they're touching the underlying code? Or is it just a reskin?" The concern is that the HarmonyOS port might be a lazy wrapper rather than a genuine engine-level adaptation — especially since HarmonyOS NEXT has fully diverged from Android, and it's still unclear whether Unity (the engine behind Genshin Impact) has solid HarmonyOS support.

Some took an industry perspective, noting that multiple major studios are partnering with Huawei for HarmonyOS ports, so miHoYo joining the bandwagon isn't surprising. But sharp-eyed netizens quickly spotted a juicy detail — Tencent was conspicuously absent from Huawei's HarmonyOS partner list.

This discovery added extra spice to the debate.

The community's meme game was, as always, unhinged. "OMG, HuaYuan!" — a portmanteau smashing Huawei and Genshin (原神 Yuánshén) together. Others riffed with "Huawei Genshin: Shiroko" — a pun mixing Huawei with the Blue Archive character. One wag cracked, "Guess the Nova 11 SE can now enjoy Genshin too" — a sly dig at Huawei's budget phone line having nowhere near enough power to run the game.

The "launch" meme discourse was another highlight. As one of gacha gaming's most enduring in-jokes, "启动！" (Launch!) started as a hype chant but evolved into layers of irony. One user asked, "Official is playing the launch meme now — what do the 'Xian Chong' crowd say?" — "Xian Chong" (仙蛆, literally 'fairy maggots') is a derogatory term for extreme miHoYo white knights who despise this kind of meme. The fact that miHoYo's own marketing team is now using it created peak awkwardness.

Others brought up the "When Genshin meets AI-patriotic-country, you get doxxed and have your nationality revoked" meme, riffing on the tension between Huawei's nationalist branding and the Genshin community. Someone even threw in a "still missing a Wu Jing endorsement" — stacking the patriotic marketing buff to maximum levels (Wu Jing being China's iconic patriotic action movie star).

But the cooler heads had their say too: "Most of us on forums don't only play Chinese games, so native HarmonyOS doesn't really affect us — we won't use it anyway. But the rollout should work fine; as long as 99% of daily apps run normally, there won't be major issues." A refreshingly grounded take amid the chaos.

As of now, miHoYo hasn't revealed specific timelines or scope for the HarmonyOS native apps, while the Switch port promise from four years ago remains an open wound. Whether this announcement represents genuine technical investment or just another round of 'hype and launch' (画饼启动), only time will tell.