On January 4th, the four-day third "Genshin FES" concluded at the Shanghai National Convention and Exhibition Center. The offline event director for the Genshin Carnival disclosed that attendance exceeded 80,000 visitors, with eighty percent of attendees traveling from cities outside of Shanghai.
In recent years, the economy surrounding comic and anime conventions has continued to heat up, with holiday periods becoming a peak time for such events to be held in various cities. According to an incomplete tally, during the 2026 New Year holiday, multiple cities including Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Xiamen, and Shijiazhuang hosted offline conventions, attracting game players to spend. Against this backdrop, game companies are increasingly hosting their own independent exhibitions to maximize the commercial value of their game IPs.
Tickets for major game IP exhibitions are exceptionally difficult to obtain. On-site, miHoYo recreated game scenes from *Genshin Impact*—such as Mondstadt, Liyue, Inazuma, Sumeru, and Fontaine—bringing them to life offline. A player who traveled specially from Yunnan Province mentioned that while "Genshin FES" had been held twice before, this was her first time attending. Tickets for previous events, held at different times of the year, were extremely hard to get; this year's scheduling over the New Year holiday finally allowed her to fulfill her wish.
According to data from ticketing platforms, "Genshin FES" tickets were priced at two tiers, 298 yuan and 398 yuan, and sold out immediately upon release. Simultaneously, many brands recognized the business opportunity presented by the convention and chose to participate. Brands including Wonder, China Post, Canon, and Damai Entertainment all had themed booths at the "Genshin FES" venue.
miHoYo is not the only game company that has progressed from participating in comprehensive conventions to independently hosting specialized IP exhibitions. For example, Hypergryph, for its game *Arknights*, created the deeply immersive narrative experience exhibition "Integrated Strategies" in 2025 and continued to host the highly sought-after "Arknights Concerto" large-scale concert, for which tickets are also notoriously hard to get.
The CEO of Guangzhou iiMedia Information Consulting Co., Ltd. stated that game companies independently hosting exhibitions is an inevitable trend for mature IPs transitioning from leveraging external platforms for exposure to managing their own主场 operations. This approach allows companies to control the user experience while deepening the IP's value and creating a commercial闭环. In the future, more game companies are expected to experiment with a model combining "online content + offline immersive experiences + peripheral merchandise consumption," which is also predicted to become the mainstream direction for game-related conventions.
The convention economy is experiencing a boom. In March 2025, the Yangpu District of Shanghai released an official response proposing to rely on leading enterprises within the district to "build a brand highland for hosting large-scale anime conventions." It highlighted that such events can effectively drive increases in both foot traffic and consumer spending in commercial areas. Public data showed that during the hosting of the "Shanghai Dimension Roaming Festival" in Yangpu District, foot traffic in the Wujiaochang business district increased by over 10% compared to the previous period, and consumer spending grew by 5.2% year-on-year.
The iiMedia CEO believes that upgraded consumption demand from Generation Z, rising popularity of domestic IPs, coupled with supportive national policies, have made conventions an important vehicle for enriching urban cultural tourism formats and shaping a youthful city image. This not only deepens the value of game IPs but also promotes growth in cultural tourism spending. This mutual empowerment of consumption suggests the convention economy has the potential to grow into a new economic growth point.
Multiple industry insiders indicated that if a "Genshin Land" theme park were to be realized, it would fundamentally reshape the influence of China's game industry and shatter market expectations regarding the value ceiling for game IPs. Globally, the Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios Japan in Osaka currently stands as the prime successful case of efficiently translating the influence of an online game IP into substantial offline theme park popularity.
A senior researcher from Shanghai Xiazhi Liangshi Consulting Management Co., Ltd. added that when game revenue potentially faces bottlenecks, capital-intensive, long-cycle theme park businesses can provide differentiated growth momentum, hedging risks associated with a single revenue stream. A theme park can transform a massive online player base into a sustainable offline消费 destination. Top-tier game IPs are high-quality resources contested by cities, as a park can drive消费 upgrades for an entire district, similar to how governments in Shanghai, Guangzhou, and other places are actively promoting the integrated development of animation, games, and cultural tourism.
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