As announced today during gamescom Opening Night Live, Genshin Impact is coming to Xbox.
In a novel trailer, we got another look at the upcoming novel nation, Natlan, which is set to arrive in Update 5.0 on August 28. The trailer showed off novel characters like the surf shark Mualani, Kinich, and Kachina, as well as various locations in Natlan. It’s nothing we didn’t know before, but it was nice to get a novel perspective on the nation ahead of launch.
But the large news is that Genshin Impact is finally coming to Xbox Series consoles on November 20. That’s huge news – until now, the game has only been available on PC and PlayStation, and while a Switch port was announced ahead of launch, four years later it’s still nowhere to be found. According to a HoYoverse representative, a Switch version was “still in development” in 2022, but there’s been no real news since then. At this point, we may just have to wait for Nintendo’s next console.
For now, though, the Xbox release is large news in itself. In our review, we gave Genshin Impact a 9/10 , calling it “an incredible open-world adventure that draws heavily on inspiration from Breath of the Wild and the anime to create something truly unique.” While the game has only gotten bigger and deeper since then, fans have been criticizing the character designs in the upcoming 5.0 update, claiming that the designs of the Natlan region draw inspiration from real-world cultures while whitewashing the characters themselves. HoYoverse has yet to respond.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Have a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
