“If you build it, they will come,” “Field of Dreams.” The video game “Fallout 76″ has amassed 20 million downloads and plays as of May 29th. This sudden spike in players is mostly due to Prime Video’s “Fallout” tv series adaptation of the Bethesda Game Studios title.
Viewers Becoming New Players
The video game first launched in October 2018, and as of December 2023, it had 17 million players. On April 10th of this year, Amazon Prime Video released its series adaptation directed by Jonathan Nolan to much fanfare. The show pulled in 65 million viewers in its first 16 days on Prime Video, making it the second most-watched title ever on the platform.
In the under two months since the show premiered, daily active users across the “Fallout” video games have increased by over 600% to more than 5 million players. The total number of concurrent players has also increased across “Fallout 76,” “Fallout Shelter,” “Fallout 4,” “Fallout 3” and “Fallout New Vegas.” All while “Fallout 4” and “Fallout 76” also sit in the top seven first-party Xbox Game Pass games by hours.
“Depending on the ‘Fallout’ game, you’re looking at a 4-6x increase in daily players, which is beyond anything I’ve ever seen in my 30 years of doing this,” Todd Howard, Bethesda director and executive producer, said. “Having an event that brings that many people into games that you have and who have never played your games before, that’s a big thing. New players who have never played a game or never played one of our games. It’s a really, really unique moment.”
“It’s kind of been sneaky popular for a while — but not to this level and it’s just been really great for the whole studio,” Howard added.
“Fallout” Season 2
Unsurprisingly, “Fallout” show has already been greenlit for a second season. Howard, who executive produces alongside Nolan, confirmed the show will continue to follow the characters from season 1.
“The one thing about TV that Jonah told me from day one is it’s about finding the characters,” says Howard. “And I think it’s really awesome how these characters have resonated with the audience. And so I think there’s still stories to tell there. There’s so many great characters — I love Norm (Moises Arias) and Chet (Dave Register), I love the two of them in every scene. And obviously we have the Ghoul (Walton Goggins) and Lucy (Ella Purnell) and Maximus (Aaron Moten). But there’s so many great characters that have a lot of stories left to tell.”
New “Fallout” Games?
“The TV show, I feel like it took us 15 years from when I first started talking about it — but it was five years since Jonah and I first talked,” Howard said. “And games take a good five-ish years. So we’re in plans for future games in this series, and nothing to talk about right now, but we’re always planning.”
We’ll keep you posted on “Fallout” updates from the Wasteland as they become available.
