Prime's Fallout Obliterates Every Other Show on Streaming with 7 Billion Viewing Minutes

Summary

• April 2024 registered a decline in the use of streaming services.
• Prime Video, on the other hand, saw an increase in viewership.
• All thanks to the Fallout series, which amassed 7 billion minutes of viewing.

Live-action video game adaptations have always been a tricky business. Sure, in recent years we've seen more successful movies based on video game franchises like Five Nights at Freddy's or The Last of Us, but more often than not we've seen attempts that failed to impress critics or audiences (how many failed Resident Evil flops have there been?).

But in April 2024, a true pop culture phenomenon was born with the release of the Fallout series on Prime Video. For all its lore flaws, the show, starring Ella Purnell, Aaron Moten, Walton Goggins, and Kyle MacLachlan, was well received by longtime fans and those unfamiliar with the source material. Moreover, Fallout became the most watched show with over 7 billion minutes of viewing!

New Nielsen's Report

On May 14, 2024, Nielsen released notable statistics as part of its new The Media Distributor Gauge. The Gauge measures TV usage across broadcast, cable and streaming.

According to the latest data for April of this year, total TV consumption nationwide fell 2% from March to April: for example, traditional broadcast TV viewership was down 3% and streaming viewership was down 1.9%.

In other words, while April 2024 saw a number of interesting releases like Netflix's Ripley or the addition of The Zone of Interest on Max, it wasn't enough to push user growth higher than in previous months. That's true for all streaming services except Amazon's Prime Video.

The service accounted for 3.2% of all US streaming. This is still not enough for Prime to be considered a leading streaming platform, as it is still outpaced by Netflix with 7.6% of the total streaming pool and YouTube with 9.6%. However, unlike these two, which have experienced some sort of decline, Prime on the contrary has enjoyed an unexpected increase of 12%, making it the largest viewership growth among its competitors.

What is the reason for the sudden surge of the Amazon-owned platform? Naturally, it has to do with the incredible success of Fallout.

Fallout Was the Most Streamed Show in April

As we said, the reason Prime has seen such dramatic success in the past month is because of the service's new original series, Fallout. According to Nielsen, the show has racked up over 7 billion minutes of viewing since its April 10 premiere!

What's more, Forbes looked at how much the show's success has influenced the entire video game franchise it's based on. For example, on Steam, one of the largest digital distribution services and storefronts in the video game market, Fallout 4 saw an impressive 55.65% increase in users from April 14 to May 14 (keep in mind that the last major game in the series is nearly 9 years old), the online multiplayer game Fallout 76 saw a 45% increase in players, and the arcade simulator Fallout Shelter saw a 35.7% increase.

The series features a standalone story that, thanks to the involvement of Bethesda Game Studios, can be flexibly integrated into the overall narrative that began with the release of the first game in 1997 and continues to this day (though many still don't understand why the show's writers decided to destroy Shady Sands).

Together with the acting, cinematography, design and soundtrack, the script, which is friendly to both newcomers and hardcore fans of the franchise, has earned the series a 93% approval rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes and an 89% approval rating from viewers.

A second season is currently in development! All eight episodes of Fallout Season 1 are now available to stream on Prime Video.

Source: Nielsen.