MiHoYo, or Hoyoverse, has begun to ramp up its presence online for the next title in their salvo of gacha dominance. Since launching Genshin Impact, the studio has exploded in popularity and cash. Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero have attracted huge audiences on their own, with the company offering gacha variations on popular genres.
Now it seems that the company is eyeing Pokémon’s lunch, as its latest title, Honkai: Nexus Anima. There’s currently only a 20-second teaser for the game, but a bunch of YouTube channels have cropped up out of the blue. English, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese channels have been set up, awaiting the full reveal of what’s suspected to be another critter catcher to challenge Pokémon.
In the initial teaser, two cute fantasy animals are sent to fight each other, as two anime characters look on excitedly. It’s brief, but it gives us a certain idea of what they might be going after.
Honkai: Nexus Anima could be Genshin developer’s next big thing
Outside of rumors, it’s pretty much in the air, but it could be a magic formula. It turns out people love Pokémon and Genshin Impact. Yes, you might have misgivings about gacha games, but Genshin itself has made around $10 billion since its launch in 2020. Zenless Zone Zero, MiHoYo’s action game, had pulled in around $100 million around its launch, and Honkai: Star Rail, a turn-based game, has gone beyond $2 billion in around two years.
Pokémon, meanwhile, has generated over $100 billion in lifetime revenue. This is all estimated, as it can be quite difficult to pinpoint numbers when they’ve been hidden from view. Now, combine the fervour around MiHoYo’s games with the creature catching concept and gacha, and you’ve got a recipe to print cash.
Everyone has tried to go after the Pokémon crown
It’s not the first time someone else has tried to gun for Pokémon’s critter crown, and Honkai: Nexus Anima. Digimon still remains in the “virtual pet” realm, rather than trying to copy Pokémon (also, they’re veiny). However, for a while in Japan, Yokai Watch, where players catch Pokémon that look like ghosts, had taken the crown.
Disney even gave it a go on DS, with Spectrobes, and then there are more obviously inspired games like TemTem and Coromon. Of course, we couldn’t round up similar games without mentioning Palworld, released in 2024, and the developer is currently being sued by Nintendo because of its ball-catching mechanics.
MiHoYo will presumably tie in its monster catching with the gacha in some capacity, but I’m unsure how it’d work. Would you pull the gacha for a particular character that comes with a creature you can’t catch in the main game? Or is it entirely full of monsters, and you’ll just have to earn enough for the good ones?
Who knows! We’ll find out later once MiHoYo begins to start their advertising campaign for Honkai: Nexus Anima. Fans are predicting that it’ll be shown at ChinaJoy, a big games event based in China. There’s going to be a lot there, including parts of the avalanche of announcements from hardware maker Ayaneo. There’s also Gamescom, where Geoff Keighley’s Opening Night Live could follow suit of the last Summer Games Fest with a blitz of gacha or adjacent announcements.
Having another option outside of Pokémon to satiate my desire to adopt every dog I see on TikTok is probably a good time, right?
Last Updated On: Jul 31, 2025 5:28 am CEST