Amazon Prime’s “Fallout” TV adaptation resonated with streaming viewers, becoming the second major live-action video game adaptation to reach a broader audience, following 2023’s “The Last of Us.” As film and TV studios race to adapt popular video games for the big screen, apocalyptic fiction could be the recipe for mainstream success.
Amazon hasn’t released official viewership numbers for the Fallout series, but social platforms are buzzing with chatter about the show, which depicts an alternate future America ravaged by nuclear war. Critics praised “Fallout,” earning it a 94 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Given the show’s reported production cost of $153 million, it’s likely that at least one Prime Video executive is breathing a sigh of relief as he scrolls through the glowing praise.
Amazon is doing their best to market this series. The company has previewed the film in movie theaters, bombarded users of its cloud gaming service with ads, and told everyone who visited Amazon’s store homepage to “watch the new show Fallout.” I encourage them. The company takes full advantage of its worldwide network to help you succeed.
When asked for comment on the marketing push for “Fallout,” an Amazon representative declined to comment or provide specific success metrics, but noted that Amazon has renewed the series for a second season. shared the company’s April 18 press release regarding the news.
“The bar has been high for lovers of this iconic video game, but so far we seem to have exceeded their expectations while bringing millions of new fans to the series.” Amazon MGM studio head Jennifer Salke said in a release.
In some ways, the mainstream success of the “Fallout” series reflects the sheer scale of the Amazon Prime machine. But the consensus among viewers and critics is that this is also a very good show.
“I’ve seen it splashed on Prime Video’s homepage, and I think they did a homepage hijack, where every module became a banner and every subbox ,” said Stephen DiPianko, CEO of marketing consultancy Metaverse Marcom. I had never heard of the “Fallout” games until I watched the Amazon Prime series. “I check Rotten Tomatoes pretty regularly for both movies and TV. When I see it’s over 90 percent, I add it to my mental queue.”
‘Fallout’s’ post-apocalyptic setting, rooted in something resembling the real world, outperforms other recent animated TV productions such as Prime Series and ‘The Last of Us’, which are live-action adaptations of major gaming titles. This may explain why it contains . including his 2022 “Halo” series on Paramount+. Many mainstream TV viewers are already familiar with the post-apocalyptic genre thanks to past successes such as AMC’s “The Walking Dead.”
“People kind of understand the post-apocalyptic survival genre, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that both of these huge successes are in that genre,” said Jason Chung, director of esports and gaming at New York University. said. “Because it’s something that humans can relate to.”
Regardless of the exact cause of its popularity, “Fallout” clearly resonates with Amazon Prime’s audience, and its original source material has also seen a healthy rise downstream as a result. In the week since the show’s release on April 10th, he has more than doubled the number of players for all Fallout games on Steam.
Bethesda Softworks, the publisher of the Fallout games, is also capitalizing on the TV series’ moment in the sun. All week, the company’s social feeds relentlessly promoted the game and explicitly invited fans of the show to step into the broader “Fallout” community through its official Discord channel. Currently, the entire Fallout series is on sale at a significant discount on the game platform Steam. Bethesda did not respond to requests for comment on this story.
Live streamers and influencers are also paying attention to this topic. After the show’s release on April 10, his total daily viewing time of the “Fallout” game on Twitch increased by 484%, from an average of 52,000 hours in the 30 days leading up to release to an average of 306,000 hours in the eight days. Increased. After release, according to data shared by game marketing platform Gamesight.
Amazon’s “Fallout” series is the latest in a growing body of evidence that video game adaptations are both a staple for streaming audiences and a particularly powerful marketing vehicle for the games themselves. In addition to HBO’s live-action “The Last of Us” series, animated shows like “Arcane” and “Cyberpunk: Edgerunners” are also boosting Netflix viewership and driving interest in its core gaming IP .
And on Amazon and beyond, this huge success doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon. Sony is developing the “God of War” series for Amazon Prime, but the release date has not yet been announced, and Amazon has announced that it will acquire the television animation rights to the popular “Mass Effect” series in 2021. Obtained.
“This is definitely what we’re expecting right now. We expect to see a similar phenomenon every time we watch gaming-related TV or movies, which is great,” said Gamesight CEO Adam・Mr. Reeve stated. “This is quickly becoming one of the reasons people play games. It’s a way to raise the profile of the gaming brand.”
