Bethesda's Fallout 4 Enjoys massive financial success
The long awaited next installment in the popular action rpg series: Fallout 4, first teased with its trailer back on June 3rd of 2015, further advertised at E3, and finally released on November 10th, 2015, has met with glowing financial success selling over 12 million copies both retail and digital on its release day. This adds up to an estimated $750 million earned in 24 hours by Bethesda and Zenimax. The game has broken sales records and swept its competition.
Fallout 4 comes down like a Nuke on its Competitors
In addition to its own record breaking sales, Fallout 4 managed to easily outperform its competitors including The AAA first person shooter: Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 and GTA V on Steam. The post-apocalyptic role-playing series somewhat overshadowed by seemingly unapproachable titans like Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto seems to have brought down these pillars of gaming like the Biblical figure Samson.
Humorously, the game seems to have been so successful its first week that it was linked to a dip in porn usage. That a game could have a measured effect on the most profitable industry on the internet is nothing short of astounding.
With help from the modding community and the overall success of the game, Fallout 4 continues to be profitable in the months after its release
Bethesda continues to rake in the caps
While its massive sales in its first 24 hours after release already makes Fallout 4 a financial success, how has it performed financially in the months since then? Unfortunatley, with Steam discounts and the…interesting relationship developers can have following a game’s release, getting an accurate estimation on just how many copies and how much money Fallout 4 has made up to this point is very difficult.
However, we can indirectly use the modding community as a gauge to see how much interest in the game there is, and it seems that with the popularity of mods for the game, Fallout 4 is still going strong.
That Fallout 4 managed to break sales records, take down its competition, and have staying power are all evidence of the effort and talent in both the developers and in Bethesda’s marketing department. Games, like movies are a combination of art and business, and it is an unenviable task to make sure that the product manages to retain its artistic quality, but still be marketable, and that Fallout 4 manages to achieve this is quite a feat.
Modern games are becoming increasingly complex as is the industry that produces, sells, and consumes them, and perhaps Bethesda’s monetary success with Fallout 4 should be a lesson on how to manage it all.
