People flock to ChinaJoy held at the Shanghai New International Expo Center in the Pudong New Area on Friday.
ChinaJoy, Asia's largest digital entertainment fair, officially kicked off in Shanghai on Friday, transforming into a vibrant festival for gaming fans and technology enthusiasts alike.
This year, the event has expanded beyond traditional games to spotlight innovations in artificial intelligence, smart devices like intelligent glasses, and popular "blind boxes" featuring characters from games and films.
Since 7:30am on Friday, crowds flocked to the Shanghai New International Expo Center in the Pudong New Area, ahead of the 9am opening. The exhibition features booths from long-running game titans such as Blizzard, Tencent, NetEase, Century Huatong and Giant. It also showcases surging new titles like "Light and Night" and "Wuchang: Fallen Feathers."
Beyond gaming, companies like BYD, Qualcomm, OnePlus, PlayStation and Xiaomi are presenting their latest intelligent devices. The displays range from smartphones, tablets and game consoles to cutting-edge AI glasses and even electric cars, demonstrating the convergence of gaming with broader consumer technology.
At the PlayStation booth, visitors enthusiastically queued for up to two hours for hands-on experience with unreleased new games from the Japanese video game giant.
People wait to trial unreleased PlayStation games at ChinaJoy.
Qualcomm's Alex Katouzian (right) and Louis Li of OnePlus show up for the exhibition.
Alex Katouzian, group general manager of Mobile, Compute and XR (MCX) at Qualcomm, stated that the American company's Snapdragon platform now supports 184 global product designs, including a wide array of Android gaming devices.
In the first half of 2025, China's mobile game market revenue reached 125.31 billion yuan (US$17.4 billion), marking a significant 16.55 percent year-on-year increase. This robust growth, according to an industry report released at ChinaJoy, was fueled by long-standing popular products in genres like multiplayer online tactical competition, shooting and strategy games, as well as strong performances from new shooting and action role-playing titles.
As mobile esports continues its surge in popularity, smartphone performance has become a critical factor influencing tournament quality, player experience and the overall industry ecosystem development. Qualcomm's technologies are playing a key role by improving both frame rates and image clarity while optimizing power consumption. This technological advancement empowers flagship titles like "Diablo Immortal" to achieve unprecedented cinematic visuals on mobile devices, complete with realistic lighting, shadows and reflections.
Cosers of "Genshin Impact" pose at the OnePlus booth.
China's OnePlus showcased at ChinaJoy its limited-edition smartphones themed on "Genshin Impact," the globally popular title from Shanghai-based miHoYo, drawing cosplayers and attention from fans.
Xiaomi's expansive booth demonstrated the Chinese electronics giant's ecosystem, which covers smartphones, electronics and even electric cars, featuring a green Yu 7 Max model on site. A highlight of their display was Xiaomi's AI Glasses, touted for their pioneering "spatial gaming" experiences by seamlessly blending virtual and physical worlds for enhanced immersion.
Xiaomi cars are on show at ChinaJoy.
Xiaomi's AI glasses
AI, extensively used in game content generation, chatbot design and robotics, also emerged as a major focal point at ChinaJoy 2025.
During a dedicated ChinaJoy AI-themed forum, the final results of the Digiloong GAIC competition, organized by Shanghai-based Century Huatong, were announced. The winning teams and projects at the Digiloong Cup Global AI and Application Innovation Competition showcased innovative applications of AI, including AI multi-modal community solutions, music generation, and dialogue-driven games featuring unexpected plots.
Local officials lauded Digiloong, meaning "digital dragon" in Chinese, as the city's first international "game + AI" competition, further solidifying Shanghai's position at the forefront of the industry and reinforcing its ambition to become a global esports hub.
People gather in front of the booth of CreateAI, a company with both gaming and AI business.
Shao Shui, principal researcher on Chinese tech giant Tencent's Hunyuan video model, speaking at the AI forum, noted that text/image-to-visual effects are now being increasingly used in game design, particularly for mini-program games, making "AI an asset" within the industry.
CreateAI showcased its innovative AI products alongside its martial arts game "Heroes of Jin Yong." This open-world Role-Playing Game (RPG), based on the intellectual property (IP) of legendary author Louis Cha (Jin Yong), aims to bring his iconic kung fu or Chinese martial arts, universe to life.
Interactive martial arts-themed activities and an AI creation experience zone attracted scores of visitors to the Chinese firm's booth, including a dedicated "ACG Fans" platform for anime, comics and games enthusiasts.
This year's ChinaJoy also saw the debut of a new humanoid robot zone in Hall 7, signaling the growing convergence of robotics with digital entertainment. Blind box fans, meanwhile, flooded Hall E6, with boxes and lucky draw for models of Ultraman, Labubu and Paul Atreides, a major character of the Dune franchise.
The exhibition, spanning 120,000 square meters and featuring over 300 exhibitors, will run through Monday.
