Genshin Impact's 3.7 reveal is this weekend, and it's gonna take a big surprise to pull me away from Honkai Star Rail

By Austin Wood
published

Genshin Impact is hitting its pre-region lull with only one new character announced

Genshin Impact 3.7
(Image credit: Hoyoverse)

Genshin Impact update 3.7 is now just a few weeks away, and per a fresh announcement from Hoyoverse, it will be revealed this weekend on Saturday, May 13. For the first time in a long time, I'm feeling indifferent about this news, simply because Hoyoverse's newest game, Honkai Star Rail, is soaking up all my free time. 

The Genshin Impact 3.7 special program will air at 5am PT / 8am ET / 1pm BT. According to the announcement, the update is titled "Duel! The Summoners' Summit!" in what sounds like a nod to Genshin's in-universe card game. 

Curiously, the announcement art doesn't feature any chibi characters. This is usually a hint at which voice actors will be hosting the program as well as who'll appear on the update's banners, so that's one more question mark hanging over update 3.7. We already know that actual cat girl Kirara will be released in the next patch, but that's about it. 

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This being the seventh patch of Genshin's Sumeru arc, the game is getting close to the release of its next big region. At most, we'll probably go up to patch 3.8 before making the jump to 4.0 with the Fontaine region. Looking at the game's release cycle thus far, this suggests the next patch or two will focus on rerun banners and events, perhaps with another trip to the Golden Apple Archipelago thrown in. 

This also means the 3.7 special program could give us a teaser for Fontaine, and the lack of characters in the announcement art actually supports this theory since it suggests Hoyoverse devs will be handling the stream themselves. It wouldn't be a surprise, but dropping Fontaine crumbs would be a good way to bring some excitement to the next update. 

Genshin Impact is kind of on cruise control now that Sumeru is functionally finished. Meanwhile, Honkai Star Rail is still riding high on launch hype and dropping one exciting character after another (check the Honkai Star Rail banner schedule for more details). It's clear that a non-trivial portion of Genshin Impact players have also gotten sucked into Hoyoverse's turn-based RPG, so Genshin's slow period has arguably come at a good time. While Teyvat coasts along until the release of Fontaine, I can spend the bulk of my time out in the stars leveling a whole new cast of anime lovelies. 

Honkai Star Rail surpassed even Genshin Impact's explosive launch with 20 million downloads in one day. 

Austin Wood
Austin Wood

Austin freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and he's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a senior writer is just a cover up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.