Phantom Blade Zero debuts strongly

China's second homegrown AAA blockbuster, Phantom Blade Zero, made a strong debut on Oct 29, reinforcing expectations that domestically developed premium games could become a sustainable growth engine for the country's gaming industry following the success of Black Myth: Wukong.

Developed and published by Beijing-based S-GAME, the third-person action role-playing game topped Steam's global bestseller chart on launch day.

According to SteamDB, peak concurrent players on the platform surpassed 730,000 on release day.

The game is priced at 268 yuan ($40.2) for the standard edition and 328 yuan for the deluxe edition, matching the pricing strategy adopted by Black Myth: Wukong. The project reportedly cost between 300 million yuan and 400 million yuan to develop.

The strong launch has raised hopes that China can build on the momentum created by Black Myth: Wukong, which became a global hit in 2024 and demonstrated that Chinese developers could compete in the premium single-player gaming market.

Ahead of the launch, the title received an average score of 88 on review aggregator Metacritic across dozens of media outlets. By comparison, Black Myth: Wukong carried a pre-launch Metacritic score of 81.

Set in a world that combines traditional Chinese wuxia with futuristic "kung-fu punk" aesthetics, the game mixes martial arts, qi-powered devices and industrial landscapes to appeal to both domestic and overseas audiences.

Despite the strong debut, analysts cautioned that Phantom Blade Zero still faces a challenging path in matching the commercial success of its predecessor.

Veteran internet analyst Ding Daoshi told The Time Weekly that the gap in market scale remains significant. Black Myth: Wukong recorded a peak of more than 2.41 million concurrent Steam players on launch day, roughly 3.3 times the peak achieved by Phantom Blade Zero.