Fallout Games Attract 5 Million Users in One Day Due to Popularity Surge

Well deserved. What a show. I just can't wait for the next gen update for Fallout 4.

I'm very much looking forward to the PS5 version of Fallout 4. I'm going to be super unoriginal and make Lucy "Goosey" MacLean.

Yeah, waiting for that PS5 version for Fallout 4. Have completed game twice before, now it is turn to join Brotherhood of Steel from start till the end and show Wasteland what is what. I am thinking to punish myself first time with Survival mode

What a time we live in! I remember when games adaption to TV shows was not sought after and was considered suicidal

I wonder if God of war will experience this with its tv show 🤔

"more than one million people played Fallout 76 within a single 24-hour period"

We're officially in the worst timeline. At least the TV show has more dialogue options than Fallout 4.

Shame Liam wrote this article and deprived Rob a chance to compare it to Rebirth's numbers.

On a serious note, though, it's nice to see @LiamCroft list a game as coming for "for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC", it's been a long held pet peeve of myself and others on the Hookshot sites that each site acts like the game is on its own platform island and makes things very confusing. Nice to see that modernizing!

Phil Spencer, while giving his fellow executives high-fives: "Great job, everyone! People love the games we made!"

I was amongst those numbers as I've been bouncing between Fallout 4 and New Vegas on PC but I'm looking forward to (hopefully) resurrecting my save on the upcoming PS5 version of Fallout 4, where I was building some overly elaborate settlements

Microsoft has GOT to find a way to force Todd to allow someone to continue the series. Insane amounts of money being left on the table due to one has-been's preciousness

So for all the ribbing they took, MS was actually on to something with all the gaming/TV talk at E3 years ago. Ironically despite sonys hard gamer pivot in reaction to their messaging, Sony ended up pioneering the gaming TV golden age. Guess we'll be seeing a lot more. Do you think this means more or less single player story driven games?

Even more proof that Movies, TV shows and Animes can help boost games and even revive some. We've seen it with Cyberpunk 2077, TLOU, Sonic, The Witcher and now Fallout. I expect even even more gamed will follow suit, and maybe to a point that the games will release day and date with the corresponding TV Show/Movie to increase launch sales.

@Victor_Meldrew Will probably see Metroid Prime 4 before the next Fallout game.

Yeah i've been replaying New Vegas this past week thanks to the show. I'm even more excited then i normally would be for the FO4 upgrade.

We wanted Fallout 5!

I would also accept Wasteland 4

@VaultGuy415 Hopefully this resurgence of Fallout will speed up the process of Fallout 5

Hmmm… a native PS5 version might be enough to get me interested enough to play my first Fallout game ever. I have FO4 in my library from that PS+ Collection that Sony just gave away like 20 awesome games to anyone who bought a PS5 that first year. FO4 has been one of the few from that collection that I’ve never played and has been gathering dust in my library

@CooCooKaChoo or Half-Life 3

@The_Wailing_Doom i think Phil is saying wow we are going to pay back the Bethesda deal even quicker than we thought. High five! If not that he is at the very least saying hey we own 5 of the top 10 selling video games on the charts at the moment, thanks for the future dev cost money. Any way you want to spin it MS is cashing in at the moment and own most of the high money making IP’s. I don’t think things are as dire over there as one on here would think. Long live the big 3!

@NEStalgia HAHA i see a few on here making fun of MS for not making the game. However they still get to play the games and MS get’s free money at this point on the Bethesda deal. Not sure how this isn’t a great thing for the industry seeing as of late all we have seen is layoff’s and canceled games. I still don’t think most understand how much money MS is going to make on the Bethesda and ABK deal. They just see 80 Billion spent and only 30 million console sales and assume windows is going to pay for everything forever. New’s flash… windows in 10 years or less may make less than Xbox.

A well deserved milestone for this Xbox Franchise.

@Th3solution You haven't played Fallout?...that usually happens when people don't have GamePass.

I have actually never really played a Fallout… So too much “openness” which makes the game boring to me. Guess it a good enough time then any other to play it.

@OnlyGaming Indeed. They literally gave me Fallout 4 and I couldn’t be bothered to play it. 😂

played through vegas and put even more hours into 76

playing fallout 3 again at the moment

I'd love it if Larian made the next Fallout.

Been revisiting New Vegas on Series X and will hop back into F4 when the update drops to finish up some DLC achievements. Love these games.

@Ludacritz Larian 100% want to work on their own IP now after BG3s success.

@Th3solution
Well nobody is perfect, especially those lacking great taste in gaming refusing to experience the wonders of Fallout.

I'm certainly one whose revisiting, playing Fallout 4, got 76 but need to try and get back into it again, feel like there needs to be more players in the world

@OnlyGaming Lol, very true, the not being perfect part, that is. Not having good taste, well, also possibly true. 😅
If it’s any consolation, Skyrim is one of my favorite games of all time. Why I have a mental block on Fallout I can’t explain. I think I’m put off by what I saw of the VATS or VAMS or whatever that system is. The description and small amount of gameplay footage I saw seemed gimmicky, I don’t know. Also, as with many long running series, I feel a little strange jumping in at the midway point. Even if the games are each standalone, there’s a sense that as a newcomer you’re missing out on some inside knowledge or existing momentum. But that’s where the TV show may help. If it is a good entry point for the uninitiated, it might segue more easily into playing these latter entires like FO4 and 76. I refuse to turn on my PS3 unless my PS4 and PS5 both die, so I don’t reckon I’ll play FO3 or New Vegas anytime soon.

@Th3solution You're not missing much, the good Fallouts were the ones before Bethesda bought the IP, anyway. Black Isle made a great IP. Then Bethesda bought it and turned it into a generic apocalypse survival RPG that takes itself too seriously. But New Vegas is worth it, it's made by a lot of key people from the originals and keeps the original feel. Go for the PS3, it's more worth it

@HonestHick IDK that it's good for the industry any more than Wii's success was good for the industry long term. Wii failed to create new core customers like it intended, and I think the result of this is that games only sell as flashes in the pan if you make a hit TV show, not really securing new core customers. If anything it returns us to games being a bottom tier companion entertainment business below film/TV. If you remove mobile/gambling from the sales figures, we go right back to gaming being dwarfed by tv/film. Which is also how execs convinced themselves 300m budgets were sustainable,they just saw a spreadsheet with total sales including iOS and saw "gaming" and thought they were looking at their potential market size. MS will make more from gaming than windows, but most of that will be selling mobile games. All the more amazing that supposedly only 10% of players actually spend money on mobile. That's a detail people miss when talking about how subscription is doomed because it's too cheap. Mobile total revenue crushes console and 90% of its players pay nothing at all. But 10% of mobile players is still more players than console has, total. It's also why selling games is harder to a generation that grew up playing games that cost nothing at all.

I can almost see the add-on effect to this is a push on just making more movies and TV shows in general, and making sure to have companion video games made by lowest bid contractors to go with them like in the 90's early '00s.

@NEStalgia and mobile makes more money on just Apple gaming service for $5 bucks a month than console. Tho i have heard apple has seen some decline in that service as of late. Mobile for sure crushes console and PC. I agree kids growing up now are not going to support paying $70 a title very often. For me i am ok with the shows helping to move software, cause i don’t watch tv. So those shows do nothing more than just up a player count in a game for me and that is more than ok. Hoping it does it for Gears of war when that show comes out 😀

@NEStalgia I fear that if I actually turn on my PS3 that the amount of time and bandwidth it will take to download the firmware update will break the internet. 😂

@NEStalgia question, if like FF16 would i also like Valkyrie Elysium? Cause i am almost finished with the main story of FF16 and will pick up the DLC then i don’t have much left to play on PS5.

@HonestHick Yeah I don't watch TV either. But I don't really see the shows as something that's really boosting player count in a meaningful way. What I see happening is just more cross-media marketing creating that FOMO hype cycle that makes fallout and toilet paper (definitely related categories these days) jump 7000% before crashing back to normal. I don't think we've generated a lot of new loyal Fallout customers. I think we've generated a TV show that hit the social media hype cycle that generated a one-time interest in checking out out an old, cheap game, that people will mess with for a few hours before going back to posting Instagrams about sandwich chains and forgetting any of it ever existed. When FO5 returns it'll be the same exact customers that were always there plus a handful of new ones that remember the show was a thing years ago.

The Cynical/wise-old-sage in me predicts the result isn't "games become more popular because TV shows existed" but that the lesson learned is that TV shows are what sell, and selling a game to go with it cashes in on the hype. I think instead of good games getting more interest due to TV series, you're going to see an industry looking more towards making TV series, and games will be a lowly add-on. Media executives are blunt instruments. There isn't nuance, only results.

Valkyrie has a lot in common with XVI. Both are Square taking a classic RPG series and making a hipper Character Action Game but marketing it as "Action RPG" But Valkyrie is the PS2-ish, clearly low budget approach to it. It's an ok game but it's nothing......stellar....I'll show myself out.

It focuses more on the combos like a traditional slasher, though, so a little more DMC than the XVI watered down souls-y action. Even though it's less of a character action game specifically if you're REALLY on an FFXVI high and don't want to let it go I'd still recommend XV before Valkylrie. I love Star Ocean/Tri-Ace, but Valkyrie just feels a little generic. Not bad, but not the best use of a large backlog time. Even though it's a big open world with a messy story, XV I think will give you more of what you were liking in XVI. Though I'd recommend that on XB over PS because it got a 1X patch. And THAT engine needs all the help it can get. You still have to choose between 4k and vaseline though.

@Th3solution LOL, I'm sure it's only like 500MB, but it'll still take 6 hours to download. The last time I started the PS3 up was I think 2018 lol. I left it running overnight to get all the patches installed. What a different era it was!

@NEStalgia i agree it’s just a flash in the pan player count cause of the show’s hype and they won’t stick around long. Well most of them won’t i should say. However it’s still profit for the studio to please its loyal fan’s with. So it’s a win even tho not a long term win. Eh not sure Valkyrie sounds my style. I really like what they done with FF16. Outside of the 30 min long dodge matches with the bosses. I was so happy i beat Titan on my first try cause that fight had 3 stages and none were less than 8-10 mins.

I liked Devil May Cry back on the PS2-PS3 days and then either i outgrew the formula or it just got worse cause now i don’t give those games a dime or min of my time.

@HonestHick Nah, it's profit in the bank to invest in oil futures with. The fans still get what the fans always get which is a Todd Howard promise and a box of eaten chocolates.

Both, DMC got worse, and you also outgrew them. The DMC combat designer did XVI's combat, and Hideki Kamiya left Capcom and founded Platinum (Bayonetta, Astral Chain, Nier Automata), so the series lost its soul, and 5 was flat out terrible and 4 from Ninja Theory was......well....it's what it was.....

Technically that new Stellar Blade may work for your XVI itch, It sounds like it has more issues than the review scores lead on, but it's still another game in that image, and better than Valkyrie by the reports so far. Stellar for a similar action format, XV for a similar (but less miserably torture-porn focused even though it's still depressing by the end) world.

@NEStalgia Yeah Todd Howard could hype up having the flu and we’d all be saying it’s awesome to sneeze and have a fever it seems. Never cared much for most Bethesda games. They are too long for me and not polished enough.

Yeah i knew some of whom left Capcom and the DMC series. I just simply don’t care for it anymore. Think it’s time to let that series take a long vacation and work on newer stuff, which i am sure in ways they are.

Stellar Blade isn’t doing much for me. It’s gotten average with style written all over it for me. Outside of this site most reviews are in the 6-7 range.

@HonestHick "Back in my day" Bethesda was very much a B-tier, budget sort of publisher. Somehow when Skyrim launched they became a magical pixie and AAAA ultra premium. But it's not who they ever were. When FO3 came out and was Bethesda, it was at the time a sort of "oh.....that's a shame" reaction even though I was a huge Elder Scrolls fan.

Bethesda design is still very much rooted in 90's PC gaming, and that's just who they are. The more they try to play the part of "AAAA game" dev, the more the wheels come off the bus. IDK when Todd became this leather-clad rockstar celebrity. I was never that back in the day. That was reserved for Carmack and CliffyB, and Molyneaux.

Yeah, a lot of the "faithful" decided that Stellar was going to be "the big one" back in January. Nothing says overhype like people convinced a linear action game is the next big thing months before it even launches. Though RoR is the weird one where critics panned it, but fans actually really like it. Not suprising I suppose, the criticism was "generic Ubisoft game". But Ubisoft games sell crazy well.

Yeah, so if generic action slasher (which lets face it, is exactly what XVI is, but with a dog) isn't doing it for you and you're looking for more of an interesting world to go with it, XV is probably your fix.

There's a lot wrong with modern FF. And I mean a LOT. But fans love it because there's still never anything quite like it. Other games do action better, other games do open world RPG better, other games do turn based better. But the magic that keeps us paying to be disappointed for 35 years is that there's nothing like it. Then again I even liked the catastrophic Spirits Within movie.

@NEStalgia agreed Bethesda games and engines are for sure 90’s vibe. Which is there trademark i suppose. Cause some players love the heck out of their games. I just never much cared. I think Todd comes off as a guy with passion for the industry and all so i have little negative to say about him. But he can sometimes be the root of the problem. Let’s hope with him working with Indiana jones project he see’s the advantages of better engines HAHA i doubt it.

ROR seemed B level from the start for me. PS fan’s were hyping it to no end and i couldn’t see it. Reviews agreed with me. Sony doesn’t have to have a masterpiece title this year. They will continue to sell loads of consoles and be just fine. In 2025 we will see what blockbusters they are working on.

I still need to beat the end of FF16 and then i will go into the DLC and see what i want to do from there. The PS5 deal for it ends in June, so i hope to see the PC and Xbox version this year. Still not sure what widescreen would do for this title. But ok HAHA

@HonestHick It's hard not to like Todd, but it's harder to trust Todd. I'm waiting for TES6. If it ever happens. We'll see if he's lost the touch or not. Oblivion was the last time I was truly impressed with a Bethesda game. Skyrim was ok but lost a lot of its mojo despite being the popular one. I'm not a big fan of remakes, but I would love a Morrowind and Oblivion remake. Great games stuck behind very old tech. Though that probably applies to Starfield, too

I'm convinced the modern PS "true fans" would have hyped Gollum as the best game ever, if only Sony had bought it as exclusive. It's the most bizarre bubble only with PS. I don't recall a large amount of people trying to defend Redfall as the best thing ever when it was an XB exclusive. If it were a PS exclusive we'd still be hearing how it's the best ever, and so misunderstood.

It always disturbs me to see the direct correlation between marketing = quality. If ROR was billed as a mid-tier game, priced as a mid-tier game I think there was a lot to get behind there. But the idea of pretending everything is some ultra premium blockbuster, pricing it as such, then running a billion dollar ad campaign until you convince the faithful it's true rubs me the wrong way. That really goes for modern Bethesda, too. These things are marketed to manufacture hype, they're not "AAA" games, nor should they be. They're great because they aren't and the more they make them try to be that the more they break what worked. (Glares at FO4.)

Widescreen FFXVI, a game where you stay locked onto one middle enemy 90% of the time and walk down hallways is about as useful as a third thumbstick. And the game can't even keep a stable fps with the normal FOV. It needs a 4:3 remaster lol.

@NEStalgia HAHA Agreed on the FF16. Widescreen seems like the most useless time invested into the game they could have done for PC. Sure it gives it a standalone feature over console. But i don’t see that meaning much when players see there isn’t much to view.

Todd is likable sure. But again Bethesda games rarely do much for me. At least the ones that launched when i was younger i should say. Maybe I’d like them a bit more now. Hard to tell.

Yeah PS is the “IT” console so people just think all the games are banger AAA. Truth is Sony kind of scrambled to pick up some mid sized titles to fill out it’s year cause the cancelled a lot of games scheduled for 24 and beyond. Again they can do that cause the console sells itself. Then once they get their big titles out that will only further help them. Right now they could sell anything and be very successful. Hell look to me. The Pro might launch with a dozen or less enhanced games and i will still hunt down a pro and either sell or keep my digital base model. So I’m no better, but at least i admit it. Honesty has to count for something HAHA 😆

@HonestHick Scrambling to get mid tier games to fill out the schedule would be a good thing if they weren't pricing it as premium and marketing like it's a top tier super special game. The dishonesty of that turns me off. Even Detective Pikachu was reduced price because even Nintendo knows that even Pokemon isn't always AAA lol. Sony thingk random games are AAAA because their name is on the lid. Isn't that how they killed their TV business? 😂

@NEStalgia that’s exactly how they killed their Tv sales. I used to only buy Sony TV’s until i got tired of the pricing and lack of ports. Went to LG Oled’s and haven’t looked back. Yeah Stellar Blade and ROR are just good games, not worth the same price as Spider-man and others. Sales will show that tho. No way these light up the sales charts. Stellar blade maybe for a week or 2 and then it will be low in sales until it hits a sale.

@HonestHick Yeah, both games are probably worth $40-50 in my mind. Good games, but not great games. Although ROR seems to be getting a lot better player reception than critical reception which is unusual for a heavily marketed Sony exclusive. It may be a case of the usual genre bias where critics expect movies and get a video game instead.

I think SB will stay a little higher on the charts a little longer because, it's controversial/selling rebellion. The devs aren't stupid, they know as well as Larian did with the "bear sex" thing what they're selling and how that boosts sales. The whole premise of the game is "What if we gave Black Pink swords?" You don't stumble on that aesthetic by accident. Let's face it at least 25% of the players of that game are not playing it because of its tight combat.... That'll keep it in the charts longer than it's actual gameplay deserves at that price. It'll also keep Deivant Art in business until the next Sonic game comes out.

@NEStalgia So stellar blade is the next tomb raider? If tomb raider was a male character that series would have died on the PS1. So i see your point even if you disagree with mine.

ROR is in the shadow of GOT. I seen the comparison more than a handful of times already. However ROR was never going to push consoles nor was it meant to. It is just Sony filling gaps and flexing their relations with dev’s to take a 3rd party game and turn it to 2nd.

Many on here won’t like to hear this but with MS having double the studios as Sony. We are going to see Sony use this tactic more often as MS has a real shot at having 4 in house games a year. Sony isn’t going to sit back and not have buzz around their console.

@HonestHick Yeah a lot of it is the same idea as TR, but there's something more cynical about SB than either TR or Bayonetta, both definitely selling its suggestiveness, but in both other cases the characters themselves are suggestive while still being somewhat practical and tongue in cheek about it. SB takes it to a new level of basically taking the aesthetics of a K-Pop Girl Group which is already the most hypersexualized thing on Earth (to be fair the Boy Bands are no less so.) It's more like a KOS-MOS, Pyra, Mythra kind of set of characters only more awkward because it's photorealistic. Yeah, some of that is just Korean entertainment industry doing what it does, but, It's a game where it feels like at some point in development they had to make a decision if they were going to make it a normal game or if it was going to be an AO18 game, they were planning on the latter, and only made the change to normal game in the last months after Sony bought it, but left most of the characters as they were, lol. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, it's a bit retro like the old booth babe days of E3 before political correctness ran amuck, but there's a certain line where it's beyond selling sex appeal and it becomes actual softporn.

I think Sony has to be careful with how it "flexes" that gap filling. They've built an expectation that a Sony game means an blockbuster masterpiece. That veneer is showing cracks if more of their games are B-tier filler than blockbuster. They used to have lower tier filler but those were presented as unique artistic games and were often unlike anything you could find elsewhere, not as expensive but uniquely Sony. Now it's literally just the filler that everyone ignored at E3 presented as first party. If they replaced the marketing budgets with development budgets they could have kept Japan Studio.

Separating reality from the brand fan faithfuls, if RoR or especially SB released, instead of as a $70 PS exclusive but as a Game Pass Day One timed exclusive, can you imagine how the PS faithful fans would be ripping it apart and mocking "good enough for game pass" games like these and how it's "ruining gaming." There's that very awkward core group that will love something they would otherwise ridicule only because their favorite brand tells them they should like it. Both are mid tier games that either company could have money hatted. SB especially is the tier of game MS likes to go after for GP. Had they got to it first, imagine how different the conversations about it would have been? Although it would have started a "seXbox" meme which actually really would have done the brand some good, I'd wager, lol

IDK, though it all depends on if MS just plans on releasing nearly everything on PS or not. They have double the studios, but I think they're warming to the idea of them being multiplats except for a specific not yet defined set of IP to keep as brand standards. Halo and Forza, I'm sure. Probably more.

Yeah stellar blade to me is more silly than serious. I have no interest in it. ROR even less so. I would rather start over on FF16 than play those. Yeah old Sony AA games were very much different in the PS2-PS3 days. PS4 just said no more of those games and now i like Sony even less cause i don’t care about Marvel games. GOWR was to long and had bad pacing. One minute im playing as the Boy and the next i am Kratos saying Boy. It was just messy even tho the core gameplay is good. There just isn’t much out yet for me that excites me much on PS5.

The core PS fan that hate on Xbox are annoying as all hell and i am sure they will be yapping about HB2 only being 9-10 hours long even tho that game has serious tech and detail behind it. Some of the settings are life like. Not saying that makes it a great game but it’s hard to say it’s GP filler when the amount of attention into that 9-10 hours is insanely well thought out.

Yeah MS may very well bring other titles over to PS, not sure if Halo and the crew are off limits or not. I would think SF is the next game to come to PS5.