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The story
A thread went up on 5ch’s “Nandemo Jikkyou G” (general live-chat board) after a string of new social games out of China dropped one after another. The main topic was the new open-world title “Infinity Ananta,” and reactions split once its monetization scheme came up — no gacha for characters or weapons, with spending limited to skins and traversal options. Alongside a wave of skepticism about whether that business model can actually work, frustration also boiled over about the monetization in popular domestic social games like Dragon Quest Walk, and names like Wuthering Waves, HoYoverse titles, and Gakuen Idolmaster came up as the thread turned into a broader Chinese-games-vs-Japanese-social-games comparison.
What people said
Still can't shake that cheap-HoYoverse-knockoff feel.
Chinese devs have this bad habit of forcing you into everything except the main content.
That game's not even breathing anymore.
Even if you only want to play when you feel like it, there's always some leash holding you back.
Saying Chinese games are 'done for' is laughable (lol)
Speaking as someone who's actually played it, it's on a pretty steep decline, no?
The Kurobane storyline makes zero sense,
and the Pukaland minigames are boring.
Thinking about it that way, Genshin actually handled its own mandatory grind pretty well.
tells you basically everything you need to know about a Chinese app.
They've got zero interest in nurturing any IP besides HoYoverse's.
Even with a popular IP, casual players bail the second something feels like a hassle.
Sounds like Unite ran into rights disputes with Nintendo.
Is there even a mobile game with a genuinely good story to begin with?
I feel like I've seen people praise Nikke's writing.
Ayakashi: Ramble!
It's as good as a classic old-school eroge.
It'll probably be bigger in Japan than GTA6.
Are you even talking to the right crowd here?
Where on earth did you run a survey to get that result?
Monetization is skins only, and for traversal you get free flying cars and robots like something out of Spider-Man or Just Cause — genuinely impressive.
There's literally nothing left to pay for.
Fun traversal is only fun for the first little while.
A game like that is bound to collapse and die.
Where's it even going to make the tens of billions of yen a year it needs?
That sounds nice in theory, but if you can't squeeze money out of whales, you've got no choice but to nickel-and-dime everyone else instead.
Why doesn't Japan copy this?
Copying that now would just get you burned in this market.
In the end, never raising the bar, like FGO does, is the real winning business strategy.
Because Japan wants to keep cutting corners, so it started going after its own users instead 🥺
At least they're popular enough with the general public that you're not embarrassed to admit you play them.
Those are all just stuff middle-aged guys keep playing out of pure inertia.
They're all just burning your time on boring minigames and gear-upgrade gacha.
You're probably still thinking in terms of domestic gacha games, but the Chinese ones are basically like regular offline RPGs.
It's the only domestic one that can actually compete on the world stage.
I don't think I'll ever actually play it, but the music videos are incredible.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Chinese-made social games have been racking up global sales largely on the strength of HoYoverse titles like Genshin Impact, pouring hefty budgets into one major release after another. The game at the center of this thread, “Infinity Ananta,” does away with gacha for characters and weapons entirely, monetizing only through cosmetic elements like skins and traversal — a design choice that drew plenty of skepticism over whether such a model could really recoup the cost of developing a blockbuster title. At the same time, frustration with Japan’s domestic gacha-based social games runs deep, with posters pointing to long-running titles like Dragon Quest Walk, where gear inflation has reached the point that clearing content effectively requires a “gear check” — you simply can’t proceed without specific equipment. Opinions on individual titles were split throughout the thread, and the discussion never settled into a simple “Chinese games win” versus “Japanese social games are finished” binary.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyou G) thread “[Breaking] Next-Gen Chinese Social Games Lined Up for Three Straight Months of Releases lolololol“.
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