miHoYo Q1 CN iOS Revenue Report: Genshin Plummets 60% YoY — Even With Star Rail, '1+1=0.85' Becomes the Meme of the Quarter

When a company runs two flagship gacha titles at the same time and the combined revenue actually goes *down* — that's got to be the most awkward spreadsheet miHoYo has faced in a long while.

A detailed breakdown of miHoYo's Q1 2024 China iOS revenue, sourced from SensorTower, has been making the rounds on NGA — and the numbers are brutal. In Q1 2023, Genshin Impact alone pulled in 43m+61m+44m = 148M USD on the CN iOS storefront. In Q1 2024? Just 21m+22m+16m = 59M USD — a staggering 60.1% year-over-year decline.

But here's where it gets truly embarrassing. Honkai: Star Rail, which hadn't launched yet in Q1 2023, brought in 10m+21m+36m = 67M USD in Q1 2024. Add them together and you get 126M — still 14.9% *less* than Genshin's solo numbers from the previous year. The comment section distilled this into a now-viral meme: '1+1=0.85. Truly miHoYo genius.' (米桑 is a sarcastic Japanese-style honorific used to mock miHoYo, implying they operate like a Japanese company.)

The OP later corrected the math to 1+1=0.851, but the meme had already taken on a life of its own. It became the thread's defining one-liner, repeated and remixed endlessly.

The comment section was overwhelmingly cynical. One user nailed it: 'It's like shuffling money between your left and right hands and still dropping some on the floor' — a perfect summary of how Star Rail cannibalized Genshin's playerbase without growing the overall pie. Another quipped 'Don't panic, it's only iOS data — the PC revenue multiplier will save us' — referencing a common defense used by miHoYo fans who argue that iOS numbers don't represent the full picture since PC is where the real money is. Needless to say, that copium wasn't winning many converts in this thread.

Some players dug into the 'why.' One commenter went back to check what Genshin's Q1 2023 content looked like: January had the Lantern Rite festival, March featured Dehya's banner and the Windblume event — generally solid updates. Then came the infamous Version 3.6 in April, which the community has since dubbed a series of '典' (dian, meaning legendary facepalm moments) — disastrous story beats and content decisions that many point to as the beginning of Genshin's reputation nosedive.

Another user went scorched earth on Genshin's current state: 'Characters are garbage, the story is written for toddlers, every event is a pointless time-waster.' They even busted out the classic Chinese idiom about 'joining the Nationalist army in 1949' (49年入国军) — meaning you'd have to be spectacularly unlucky to start playing Genshin right now, just as it's circling the drain.

Looking ahead to Q2, some analysts in the thread flagged continued risk: Star Rail was still riding its launch honeymoon in Q2 2023, while this year it already burned through some anniversary and first-purchase-reset revenue in March. The YoY comparison could flatline or even worsen.

Of course, there were a few optimists — or were they? One commenter broke out the classic *Downfall* meme format: 'Once ZZZ (绝区零, Zenless Zone Zero — miHoYo's upcoming action game) launches its attack, everything will be fine.' Whether that's genuine hope or peak sarcasm, only time will tell.