(Yicai) Oct. 30 -- Phantom Blade Zero, a Chinese AAA action game inspired by the choreography of Hong Kong kung fu films, shot to the top of the global best-selling chart of digital distribution platform Steam on its first day, with its success likened to Game Science's 2024 hit Black Myth: Wukong.

Beijing-based S-Game launched Phantom Blade Zero on Windows and Sony's PlayStation 5 yesterday, with concurrent players on Steam surpassing 300,000 within an hour before peaking at 723,876.

The game builds a fictional world that blends elements of wuxia -- a Chinese literary genre centered on martial arts heroes, chivalry, and justice -- with steampunk aesthetics. Players take on the role of a swordsman whose heart has been badly damaged and who has only 66 days left to live, unraveling a conspiracy that shrouds the martial arts world.

To make the wuxia adventure work, the creative team invested substantial resources, said Liang Qiwei, founder and chief executive officer of S-Game. The project's development cost was between CNY300 million and CNY400 million (USD45.1 million and USD60.1 million), close to that of Black Myth: Wukong, Liang pointed out.

Tech giant Tencent Holdings is one of S-Game's key investors and has also provided key funding and resource support for Phantom Blade Zero's AAA development, indicating a high-budget, high-profile game developer, and a well-known publisher. ZhenFund, NetEase Capital, and Hero Entertainment were also among the studio's early investors.

Compared with Black Myth: Wukong, which broke into the market by leveraging Chinese classical mythology and the Monkey King intellectual property, Phantom Blade Zero focuses on showcasing wuxia combat, Zhang Shule, a game industry analyst, told Yicai. The new game is more of a steampunk-styled wuxia game with an aesthetic reminiscent of the Best Foreign Film Oscar-winner Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, so it may attract more overseas players, Zhang pointed out.

It would be difficult for Phantom Blade Zero to match the sales of Black Myth: Wukong, but reaching 10 million copies sold in its first year looks very promising, a game industry investor said to Yicai, noting that its content is "distinctive and well polished."

The game's pre-order numbers have been solid, allowing it to build sales momentum, an industry insider pointed out. The next question is whether word of mouth can sustain continued sales, the person noted, adding that if it eventually reaches even half the sales of Black Myth: Wukong's, or around 15 million, that would be a huge success.

Phantom Blade Zero's pre-orders topped 500,000 as of Oct. 20, bringing in revenue of about USD24 million, according to data analytics site Alinea Analytics. In the 70 days before its release, Phantom Blade Zero sales were about 73 percent of Black Myth: Wukong's in the same period.

Black Myth: Wukong changed the external environment for Chinese standalone games, an insider from the game publishing sector told Yicai. Players are willing to pay for premium domestic single-player games, while leading publishers have increased investment in such titles, with the industry as a whole stepping up spending on development and marketing, which has attracted more professionals to join, the person stressed.

A batch of single-player game projects launched by developers over the past few years is expected to enter a peak release period over the next two years, the insider pointed out. Who will be the next Black Myth: Wukong may no longer be the key question as more titles launch, he said, noting that what matters more is that games across genres must find enough players and investment returns to fund the development of the next title, creating a healthy industry cycle.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Martin Kadiev