Genshin Impact is very weird in the monetization aspect. On the one side you can clearly pay large amounts of money to get strong 5-star heroes and weapons. On the other side, either there is no paywall, or the paywall comes a lot later. At launch, Genshin Impact has 2 regions, out of a final 7. But those 2 regions are estimated to already have 60 hours worth of content in them, and the third region might be coming as early as the next patch in a few weeks. You can play those 60 hours of current content using just the heroes the game gives you for free. And as that is as much content as you might get when buying a triple-A game on a console, getting this much content without a paywall is rather generous.

So how can this possibly work? It works because gamers *always* want to be stronger, regardless of whether a stronger hero is really required or not. You can get gamers to pay for power, even if that power isn't required to win, and isn't strictly speaking pay to win. It also works because the notion that games are for children, and children don't have much disposable income, is now completely outdated. The average mobile gamer is 36 years old and female. And this population is increasingly encroaching onto the "male teen" territory of console gaming, with console games like Animal Crossing or Genshin Impact. Adults not only have more disposable income, they are also quite used to spending larger amounts of that on their leisure activities. Spending $600 on Genshin Impact may seem a lot, if compared to the cost of a video game; but it isn't all that excessive if you compare it to the cost of let's say a skiing trip. I'm pretty certain that the makers of Genshin Impact are raking in a lot of cash, even if there isn't a paywall in the game (yet).