Taking the idiom "better late than never" to heart, Overwatch is finally getting crossplay, a highly-demanded feature ever since the game launched in 2016. Roughly five years after the game's initial launch, Blizzard has surprised fans by confirming that fans will be able to play Overwatch with their friends, no matter their platform, very soon.
Blizzard has been teasing many new features for Overwatch and upcoming sequel Overwatch 2 a lot lately, and it seems this is probably one of the biggest planned updates for the original game. Whether or not this new feature will make its way into Overwatch 2 is up in the air, but it seems like Activision Blizzard is making an effort to unify its player bases across platforms. This follows Call of Duty implementing a similar policy in 2019, helping to further cement crossplay as an expected feature in modern online games.
Newly appointed director Aaron Keller revealed the new Overwatch crossplay feature in a new video, confirming that all platforms - including Nintendo Switch - will be able to play together very soon. This is likely one of the Overwatch features Keller teased earlier this year, and it seems like the change will be rather seamless. All players need to do is create a Battle.net account and link it to their console account. Sadly, as revealed in an Overwatch FAQ, the crossplay update will not coincide with cross-progression, meaning that players can't take their unlocks and purchases between platforms.
It's possible this was a bit of a Hail Mary effort to boost player count in the first Overwatch. The game has definitely lost some players since launching in 2016, so bringing in a feature that fans have asked for over many years while also creating one large pool for matchmaking could really help pump some new life into the game.
Overwatch 2 will likely have crossplay as well, though nothing has been confirmed. It would certainly be a bit odd to introduce a whole system in the first game while the sequel is right around the corner and not carry it all over. It's possible that it was built with the sequel in mind, but Blizzard saw an opportunity to implement it in the first game. Not only can they test it a bit as a result, but it'll hopefully build some momentum for the next Overwatch as a result. It's unclear when the feature will be added, but it'll likely be fairly soon.
Source: Blizzard/YouTube, Overwatch
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June 10, 2021 at 12:22AM
