In a recently published post asking fans to vote for Fallout 76 at the upcoming Steam Awards, Bethesda revealed that the online RPG has now crossed 21 million players across all platforms in its lifetime. Earlier this year, in June, the game was confirmed to have crossed 20 million players.

Bethesda has kept up impressive support for Fallout 76 since its launch six years ago, with a number of expansions, free updates, ongoing events, and more. Earlier this year, the company released the Skyline Valley update, bringing a new region of the map for players to explore. The game’s next free update, dubbed Gleaming Depths, goes live on December 3, touting a new raid, C.A.M.P. pets, and more.

Fallout 76 is available on Xbox One, PS4, and PC, and is playable on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S via backward compatibility.

In fact, amidst the recent Fallout mania brought about by the raving success of the Amazon Prime adaption, Fallout 76’s player base has seen a marked jump. As reported by Variety, the game has hit 20 million players worldwide across all platforms as of May 29. That’s up from 17 million players in December.

Shortly after the Fallout show’s premiere on Amazon Prime, multiple games in the series released by Bethesda over the years saw significantly boosted sales and player engagement, which Fallout 76 benefited from as well, to say the very least.

Fallout 76’s next big content update, Skyline Valley, is due out sometime this month and will bring a significant map expansion for the game, among other things. Read more on that through here.

That’s as per known leaker @billbil_kun on Twitter, who recently said that a Diablo 4-themed special edition Xbox Series X model is on the way- though whether or not the package will be bundled with the game itself is currently unclear. Allegedly, the console will be priced at $559.99 and will launch on the same day as the game, though when it will be formally unveiled remains to be seen.

Diablo 4’s open beta went live earlier this month, allowing players to sample a heathy chunk of content from the action RPG, including three classes – Barbarian, Rogue and Sorcerer – and a level cap of 25.

Diablo 4 is due out on June 6 for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, Xbox One, PS4, and PC.

https://twitter.com/billbil_kun/status/1640720654990204929

You can never praise Game Pass enough. Microsoft has pioneered something truly special with its subscription based service, giving consumers access to a vast, vast library of games (that just keeps on growing) for very reasonable prices, and people have responded to it spectacularly. Surely, it’s been a major factor in the resurgence the Xbox One has seen in terms of popularity lately.

According to Aaron Greenberg, Xbox’s GM of marketing, people have responded to Game Pass’ value with great positivity, especially in Europe. “In Europe the uptake of Game Pass has been particularly strong, people have responded really positively to the value,” Greenberg said while speaking with MCV. “It just depends on the market, some markets are more ‘I want to own these games as part of a collection’ and others are like ‘I want access to a huge library’.”

As per Greenberg, there’s as much value in Game Pass to Microsoft’s partners as there is to consumers as well. He brought up the example of Bethesda and Fallout 4 to make his case, saying that by putting that game on Microsoft’s service, they’ve driven up the interest among Xbox One owners for their upcoming Fallout 76.

“There are strategic benefits for partners,” Greenberg said. “Think about Bethesda putting Fallout 4 into Game Pass, they’re able to take that huge base of people who are Game Pass subscribers and introduce them to that, in advance of Fallout 76. It drives great engagement for them so it’s an opportunity to create new fans and drive that engagement further.”

Microsoft has been adding excellent games to Game Pass on almost a constant basis. September saw the likes of Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Quantum Break being added to the catalog, while next month, Wolfenstein: The New Order will join the library, while Forza Horizon 4 will be receiving a simultaneous Game Pass launch as well- you can read our review for the open world racer here.