Microsoft recently launched XP, a division of XBOX focused on extending their worlds beyond video games, following in the footsteps of Nintendo and Sony who have launched similar initiatives over the last couple of years, and reinforcing a growing trend of game franchises making the leap to film.
It’s a win-win situation: adaptations get a built-in audience and stories to draw inspiration from, while the franchise reaches new audiences and reignites existing ones through the new medium. In PlayTracker’s analytics, though the scale and type can vary, every single notable adaptation has delivered a clearly measurable boost to the franchise it is based on.
Most recently, Resident Evil hit cinemas worldwide to critical acclaim and commercial success. Meanwhile, across all Resident Evil games available on modern platforms, over a million people returned to the franchise or gave it a try for the first time in the weeks that followed:
Even the biggest games can get even bigger.
Last year, A Minecraft Movie took cinemas by storm and made almost a billion dollars. One might think the best selling game of all time had no heights left to reach, yet Microsoft reported a 75% increase in active players for the game following the movie’s run.
And it’s not just cinemas - CD Projekt Red worked with Netflix to adapt both of their big franchises. The Witcher show brought new players to The Witcher 3 with every new season, though the bump got smaller every time:
Beyond direct adaptations, numerous big franchises continue to intertwine film and games with popular ongoing games. Marvel Rivals and Marvel Snap tie their in-game events to the latest movies and shows from Marvel Studios, Insomniac Games’ Spider-Man games have inspired stunts in the latest movie, and Star Wars games continue to expand the canon.
For example, despite being in completely different genres (and vastly disagreeing in their stance on game title punctuation), the strategic STAR WARS Zero Company and the furiously fast STAR WARS: Galactic Racer overlap quite significantly:
With so many success stories down in the books and many more projects in the pipeline, we expect to see games and film intertwine even more in the years to come.
This article was written in collaboration with Blend - a conference in Zagreb, Croatia connecting the film and gaming industries, which PlayTracker is partnering with.
Among the speakers attending are some of the people whose work was mentioned in this article, like Željko Barčan - VFX Supervisor on A Minecraft Movie and Resident Evil (2026), and Maria Glowacka - Head of Franchise at CD Projekt Red.
If you'd like to attend Blend for free, register here. See you there!
