HONG KONG — China’s video game industry is hoping for a major power-up from the global release on Tuesday of the highly anticipated title Black Myth: Wukong.

The single-player role playing game, developed by Tencent-backed Hangzhou startup Game Science, is widely regarded as a new standard bearer for Chinese games since the first trailer was revealed four years ago.

The game is based on the classic Chinese novel “Journey to the West,” and puts players in control of protagonist Sun Wukong — a mythological monkey king. Preview footage impressed viewers with the character’s lifelike fur and skin, as well as the game’s fluid animation.

Black Myth hits PCs and PlayStation 5s first, and will be followed by a version for Xbox Series consoles. After presales began on June 10, at a starting price of 298 Hong Kong dollars ($38), the game quickly became a bestseller on the Steam platform for PC titles, attracting gamers both in China and overseas.

The launch comes as the Chinese gaming sector undergoes a shift. The market remains dominated by games for smartphones, which accounted for around 73% of total sales in the first half of the year, according to official industry data. But that share had declined from previous years, while console games like Black Myth have been gaining ground, reaching 23% in the first half.

Until as recently as 2015, China banned production and sales of consoles, leaving developers in the dark on how to optimize their games for controllers instead of the touch screens of smartphones.

“About a decade has passed since the ban was lifted, and more people are getting used to console games,” explained Hideki Yasuda, a senior analyst at Toyo Securities in Tokyo. China “has been catching up to the global standard.”

Yasuda said that Chinese companies like Tencent have absorbed know-how through investments in console-based gaming companies in Japan and elsewhere. He called Black Myth: Wukong the “first full-fledged game from China that was developed for consoles.”

High-quality console games, however, are notoriously expensive to develop, comparable to blockbuster movies, with budgets running into tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.

Chinese media estimated that Black Myth’s development, excluding marketing fees, cost at least 400 million yuan ($56 million). But if it is a hit, it could inspire more domestic developers to produce such ambitious games and open doors for them on the international market. This could even be seen as a win for Beijing’s soft power, as observers say the cultural elements portrayed in the game are in line with its ideology.

A worldwide blockbuster could also help stimulate the sluggish global gaming industry. Sony Interactive Entertainment, the unit of Sony Group behind the PS5, in February said it will lay off 8% of its employees globally. Bungie, a U.S. game developer that Sony acquired in 2022, recently let 220 people go. Sales of Sony rival Nintendo’s Switch, which has entered its eighth year, have slowed as gamers await a successor console, which is expected next year.

Gamers line up to try Black Myth at an exhibition in Cologne, Germany, in August 2023.   © Getty Images

Ahead of Tuesday’s release, the buzz about Black Myth was largely positive, although a controversy over alleged sexism has been swirling around Game Science.

IGN, one of the top websites for game reviews, called Black Myth a “great action game with fantastic combat, exciting bosses, and a few too many bugs.” It gave the game a score of 8 out of 10. IGN China, which gave the game full marks, said of Black Myth: “While not perfect, compared with games of similar scale internationally, Game Science has managed to produce its first single-player game with roughly one-third of the team size and a not significantly longer development cycle.”

Following the rave reviews, brokerage China Industrial Securities called the official release “a new milestone moment” for domestic games.

Still, there are pitfalls ahead.

A senior executive from a listed Chinese gaming company, who declined to be named, said that while Black Myth shows that Chinese developers are capable of producing good games that draw global interest, the console segment in China faces challenges such as copycats and a lack of continuous funding. In the past few years, quite a few costly console games were scrapped before they could be launched, he added.

Yasuda at Toyo Securities said one hit would not make Game Science an immediate threat to established game developers. He also cautioned that technical challenges could hamper the title’s appeal. On the PS5, the expansive world of Black Myth gobbles up about 100 gigabytes of the console’s 825 GB internal storage space, limiting the number of games players can have installed at one time.

“There is no easy solution,” he said.

As for Tencent, some analysts predict the company will work on a mobile version of Black Myth in the future. Reports say the Chinese gaming giant has been working on a mobile game based on “Elden Ring,” an action role playing game for consoles, co-developed by “Game of Thrones” author George R. R. Martin and veteran game designer Hidetaka Miyazaki.

In a conference call with analysts last week, Tencent President Martin Lau said it had been increasingly difficult to come up with successful new titles due to the strong performance of existing franchises. Tencent has been searching for fresh hits after Honor of Kings, the most profitable title in China since it was released in 2015, set the bar for consumer expectations.

The company is likely hoping that in Black Myth, it has found its next big thing.