Everstone Studio’s Where Winds Meet has a release date, but you likely won’t be able to play it just yet.
As reported by Gematsu, its initial launch is on PC this December 27, 2024 but only in China. Subsequently, it will launch on iOS and Android on January 29, 2025, lining up with the start of the Lunar New Year.
But Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad shared an interesting tidbit about this upcoming Chinese market release that may surprise you:
“I had at least 3 conversations today with people who didn’t realize this is a F2P game.
It’s part of the broader trend we see out of China. AAA production values and 100+ hour narrative driven content at no cost, with monetization via cosmetics / live service / multiplayer.
I should probably note that NetEase hasn’t announced the monetization model outside China. So it very well could be a paid title.
But in China the bet is on drawing people in with a full game for free, and monetizing long term.”
It is worth remembering here as well that much like their Eastern Asian neighbors in Japan and Korea, China’s game industry has been long established with its own norms and standards that cater to their local market, but was rarely experienced outside of it.
For Japan, they had games that were only available in the country in their Japan exclusive i-mode service, made by DoCoMo. For Korea, before the IMF crisis of the late 1990s, they had a small but thriving local PC RPG market, full of original titles.
But as you can tell, I am sharing examples from distant older periods in video games for both countries. Here and now, China’s gaming industry has seen changes with the rise of console gaming, the current spate of laws and regulations controlling the market, and the influx of games made outside of China, that were brought in via partnership with local companies.
If Everstone tried to sell Where Winds Meet outside of China using a free-to-play model, it may be an entirely hard sell. Gacha players will certainly have something different to play from the Zenless Zone Zero and The First Descendant types, but there’s a lot more gamers in the rest of the world who expect to pay full retail so they can own the game.
If anything, Black Myth Wukong could possibly show Everstone the right way forward for their game, but perhaps we are talking about all of this prematurely. We really should wait and see if China turned out to be beta testing Where Winds Meet to prepare them for a harder to please, but more lucrative, international market, who can then feel that that full retail price purchase will be justified.
