First impressions do matter and no amount of 'le subversion' or 'actually X was Y all along!!' can undo the damage Hoyoverse did through their choice of promo material before the region even had come out

>>530781914
If anything they should be regretting the awful first impression they gave by putting out a video showing three pokemons surfing around right when the 'Genshin is a game for kids' sentiment was at an all-time high due to the concurrent releases of the games that tried to market themselves as REAL MATURE GACHA GAMES FOR REAL MATURE PHONE GAMERS

>>527775545
The double whammy of Natlan's first trailers with the saurians combined with the 5.8 summer event releasing right as both WW and ZZZ came out and tried to pretend to be mature gacha games for mature gamers was like a deathblow
Considering the first impression (which DOES matter no matter how much /gig/ tries to deny it) the region got it was doomed to be a disaster right from the start