Marketing Insight

Bethesda Games Studios is a worldwide renowned video game development studio. However, the level of popularity for the studio is split amongst the gaming community. On the one hand, it’s had huge successes in the past with titles like ES IV: Oblivion (2006), Fallout 3 (2008), ES V: Skyrim (2011) and Fallout 4 (2015). In recent years however, the studio had fallen out of favour amongst critics and fans. A heavily criticised launch of Fallout 76 (2018) suffered from technical failures, server crashes and poor-quality physical merchandise. Following that Bethesda saw a 97% drop in player count in the six months after the release of Starfield (2023) due to lack of a live service model (regular content updates).

Then in 2020, Amazon announced that it had licensed the rights to produce a live-action TV adaptation of the Fallout Series. Strong casting announcements followed, with Walton Goggins and Emma Purnell taking lead roles and filming began in 2022.

HBO, Paramount and Universal had all launched successful live-action video game adaptions with The Last of Us (2023-present), Sonic the Hedgehog (2020-2024) and The Super Mario Bros Movie (2023) respectively. So how did Fallout fair when it aired in 2024?

Accelerating Growth

The show itself has been a huge hit with audiences. But what impact did it have on the video game series and Bethesda’s fortunes?

Firstly, player counts increased significantly for Fallout 76 and Fallout 4, as well as other previous Fallout games. Fallout 7 reached an all-time high of 1 million Steam players across all platforms on the day after the show’s release. Fallout 4 saw a 7,500% week-on-week increase in sales, which saw it return as the top-selling title in the European sales charts, nine years after its initial release. Overall, it’s estimated that the first series generated an additional $80 million in revenue for Bethesda.

The additional revenue and demand for the games that the series has created, allowed Bethesda to innovate further by:

• Releasing next-generation console editions of titles such as Fallout 4 to meet increased player demand
• Integrating between the live-action series and games by adding in additional content to both Fallout 7 and Fallout Shelter

Licensing its IP to Amazon to create a TV show was a risk for Bethesda. How would it be received? Would the show be loyal to the game’s lore and style that had brought previous games so much success?

The answer? Amazon’s Fallout drove significant additional revenue for Bethesda, whilst also widening its audience of fans which is going to positively impact future titles.