Amazon’s Fallout TV series has rightly racked up around nine million plaudits since its launch, with the latest coming from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. During a call that previewed the company’s latest financials, we learned just how much the series has boosted player counts for Fallout titles on Game Pass.
Touching on the series, which recently received a slew of Emmy nominations and was renewed for a second season faster than you might think VATS would be, Nadella revealed (thanks, IGN) “hours spent playing on Game Pass for the Fallout series increased nearly fivefold quarter-on-quarter” following the series’ launch.
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While we already knew that Walton Goggins and Ella Purnell running around California did wonders for getting people back into Fallout 4, Fallout 76, Fallout New Vegas, and their predecessors, Microsoft hasn’t previously mentioned what impact it had on the Game Pass service specifically.
In addition to that number, Nadella had a lot to say when discussing how Microsoft’s gaming division is doing. Both Xbox games revenue and content and services revenue are up 44% and 61% year over year, respectively, though it’s worth noting that much of that growth is due to the impact of the Activision Blizzard acquisition, which had no impact on these numbers last year, as it didn’t fully close until October.
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In fact, as Kotaku’s Ethan Gach noted, in terms of gaming revenue, the company would actually be down 4% without the 48 revenue points attributed to Activision Blizzard. In terms of content and services, they would still be up, but only by 3%. This is similar to last quarter, where Xbox’s gaming revenue would also be down 4% without ActiBlizz, while content and services would be up just 1%.
Meanwhile, the recent trend of hardware sales sinking or plateauing continues — and it’s not just Xbox that’s affected — as evidenced by the earnings report, which shows a 42% year-over-year decline, an augment from the previous quarter when console sales fell 31% year-over-year.
