To participate, select 'PTR: Overwatch' from the Region/Account setting. The Public Test Region (PTR) is an alternative region available on the Battle.net app that allows players to beta test select features before they are put into the full game.
Blizzard is apparently planning to release a patch for Overwatch so enormous, you can't download and install it like an ordinary update. A company representative has posted a warning on its forum. Below are the minimum system requirements for Overwatch® on Windows. Due to potential programming changes, the minimum system requirements for Overwatch may change over time. Note: For a list of compatible video hardware, see our Supported Video Cards list.
Update, October 16: The Overwatch zeitgeist has scarcely slowed down, as the game has now reached over 35 million players.
The popular videogame Overwatch is quite popular. Even more than a year after launch it continues to draw in new players, and though the rate of newbies coming has slowed down, they’re still joining in by the millions.
Just started playing? Here’s our picks for the best Overwatch characters.
How Big Of A Download Is Overwatch
Blizzard announced via Twitter today that Overwatch now has over 35 million players. The replies – of course – are universally jokes about how not a single one of them is on the payload.
What a bunch of misfits and freaks we got here—we love it!
Thanks for teaming up with us, heroes. pic.twitter.com/aBENKWS17f
— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) October 16, 2017
If you’re of a cynical mind, you might suggest that these counts are getting pumped up thanks to free weekends and the like, and you’d certainly be right. But last month saw Overwatch hit a new peak concurrent user count, so even if not all of those players are sticking around once their free time with the game is up, enough are staying that the more pertinent numbers have continued to be impressive. And hey, most games would kill for five million news players every six months, whatever the causes.
We’re sure to hear a whole bunch more about Overwatch in the near future, with the Overwatch League set to start in a few months and BlizzCon just a couple of weeks away.
Update April 28, 2017:Overwatch’s player count has once again passed another milestone, with Blizzard’s colourful FPS now boasting 30 million registered players. That’s a lot of Hanzo mains.
It was only at the end of January when Blizzard reported a player count of 25 million, so that’s five-million new players in just a few months.
More than 30 million players have charged into Overwatch!
Thanks for grouping up with us, heroes. We couldn't ask for a better team. pic.twitter.com/j2lRsUtpnd
— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) April 28, 2017
It was back in January when Psyonix announced that Rocket League had 25 million registered players too, though that was helped along by inclusion on free games service PlayStation Plus.
Rocket League now has 30 million players, so Overwatch looks primed to take it over. After all, Rocket League has been out a fair bit longer than Blizzard’s FPS. As industry analyst Daniel Ahmad points out in that tweet linked above, this means Overwatch is level with Destiny in terms of popularity.
Update January 27, 2017:After just a few months released, Overwatch’s player count has reached 20 million.
25 million players across all platforms is a remarkable achievement for any game, let alone a brand new IP that’s barely seven months old. Blizzard made the announcement via the official Overwatch Twitter account, the first time they’ve mentioned their player count since the game passed to 20 million player mark back in October. While that shows a slow in user growth, it’s still five million new players in a matter of three months.
The world needs heroes, and over 25 MILLION have answered the call!
The fight for the future isn't over yet, though… Are you with us? pic.twitter.com/aVoON7QwMB
— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) 26 January 2017
Of course this also means we get to compare those impressive sales numbers to other fun numbers. For example, there are 62,500 as many Overwatch players in world as there are Sumatran tigers left in the wild. Still though, it’s barely as scratch on the 1.8 billion Coca Cola servings that are sold each day – it would have to improve 72 times over to match that. Pitiful when you put it that way.
The announcement coincides nicely with Overwatch’s Year of the Rooster event, which shows there’s still every reason for prospective gamers to pick the game up as it’s showing no signs of disappearing.
Update October 12, 2016:After just a few months released, Overwatch’s player count has reached 20 million.
That’s a lot of future being fought for. Overwatch is now reaching Call of Duty numbers with 20 million registered players to date. This was revealed alongside the Halloween skins and cosmetics that showed up yesterday, Blizzard never missing an opportunity to brag about just how many people are willing to shoot each other in a Saturday Morning Cartoon.
With a nation strength now larger than Romania, it’s a truly impressive record for such a short period. As pointed out by industry analyst Daniel Ahmad, it took Destiny a year to get to the same total, though without the benefit of the PC crowd. It also compares favourably to the yearly sales of titles like Call of Duty that usually sit in the 30 million range across their short lifespan.
With places like South Korean PC bangs making it hard to judge exactly how much money this has brought into the company, when you consider the existence of the in-game loot boxes, highly successful real-world merchandising and the various versions of Collector’s Editions – well, it’s probably an awful lot of cash. We’ll doubtless hear more come the Activision Blizzard investor conference call on November 3, just a day before BlizzCon.
Update Jun 14, 2016:Overwatch has now had over 10 million players according to an official tweet.
Blizzard continue to keep us appraised of Overwatch’s player numbers, which continue to be fairly ridiculous. The game has now passed 10 million of us barriering, headshooting and lots of other verbs that aren’t actually words.
Here’s the official tweet confirming as much:
Ten million Overwatch agents activated and counting! Thank you for daring to see the world for what it could be. pic.twitter.com/5nCe4e32XT
— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) 14 June 2016
That’s after just three weeks of being available, making an average of a bit under half a million new players a day. We won’t even do the math on how much money that is, especially when you take the odd loot box purchase into account, but lets be honest – probably a worthwhile pursuit by the folks in blue. Definitely also one of the fastest growing new IPs of all time, if not the biggest on every metric. The first Overwatch patch has also now gone live, all that’s left is to see what eSports plans Overwatch enact.
Update June 2, 2016:You might have realised already, but Overwatch is damn popular. In fact, Blizzard say it now has 7 million players across all platforms.
These 7 million players have logged over 119 million hours, swapped heroes 326 million times, and delivered 11 million payloadsin the little over a week since the game released.
“Over the months and weeks leading up to release we saw a lot of love and support for Overwatch – from Blizzard gamers, FPS fans, and people who’d never picked up a game like this before – and we’re very grateful for everyone’s incredible passion and enthusiasm,”said Mike Morhaime, CEO and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment.
“We poured a lot of effort into creating a game – and a new universe – that anyone could enjoy. We’re ecstatic to have had such a successful launch, and we’re looking forward to all of the fun, competition, and new content still to come.”
Ubisoft previously boasted The Division’s launch success, claiming the gamewas the most successful new IP launch ever. It would be interesting to see how Overwatch stacks up, but Blizzard are talking players and Ubisoft are talking money. Why can’t we all speak the same language, eh?
There’s currently no way you could be a player without actually buying Overwatch, though, so these player numbers may equate to around the same in sales.
Original Story May 31, 2016:It’s a lot more difficult to tell how Overwatch has done versus its Steam-based counterparts. Normally a quick glance at Steamspy, a bit of math and some fudging will tell you if a game has sold – Doom, for example, now sits atover 500,000 owned on Steam. For anything not on that platform, and particularly for Blizzard who are infamously number-shy outside of their quarterly finance calls, we have to go elsewhere. The best we have so far is the UK retail charts, where Overwatch debuted at number one this week across all platforms, with a split of 47% PS4, 36% Xbox One and 18% PC.
No exact numbers are given publically, but we do know that, for example, the PS4 version on its own out-sold everything else this week, while Xbox One copies sold less than Uncharted 4’s third week in the charts. Meanwhile PC is down in fifth, as NeoGAF details.
For those wondering why PC is such a low share, this really is retail only. Chart-Track, the company that puts it together, gives a brief description of how it works on their methodology page. It’s unlikely that even large web shops like Amazon are taken into account, just folks who walk in to high-street stores for a copy of a new game – not exactly common practice for PC gamers.
That it’s even 18% is surprising, and could indicate lower sales on the other platforms than expected. It is the “fastest selling Blizzard title on console” but also only the second time they’ve released a major game on non-PC systems, and the first time that it has actually been new at the time. The 18% may also come from a high volume of collector’s editions sold, as the large box of statue, artbook, game and other goodies will have been high value to any devoted Blizzard fan.
And yes, they’re well aware that adds up to 101% – the magic of rounding.
For now, that’s all we know. We’ll likely hear active player numbers or the like from on high before too long in a blog post, but it will be August before the next Activision Blizzard investor conference call forces them to reveal a bit more. Even then we’re unlikely to get an exact total of copies sold unless Blizzard really want to show off – Legacy of the Void’s million-in-a-day, for example.
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CloseBlizzard finally seems to understand that the company exists in a post-World of Warcraft era, and there is no clearer sign of that than the game maker's investment in upcoming squad-shooterOverwatch.
Overwatch is a game born out of the wreckage of Blizzard's last attempt at a massive, World of Warcraft-like game codenamed Titan, and is inspired by the company's relatively tiny game and surprise hit Hearthstone.
'In the post World of Warcraft-era of Blizzard, something we had to learn and it took us awhile to learn was that not every game is going to be World of Warcraft,' said Jeff Kaplan, game director on Overwatch. 'What I mean by that is a game that enjoys 10 million subscriptions. A game that lasts 10 years.
'Sometimes it is OK to have a smaller, self-contained game.'
Blizzard's mysterious next-gen massively multiplayer game Titan was canceled after seven years of development and it sounds like little more than lessons came out of the process.
'There is definitely inspiration from Titan,' Kaplan told me during an interview earlier this month. 'There are definitely some similarities between Titan and Overwatch. But Overwatch really is its own project built from the ground up.
'We learned mostly what not to do while working on Titan.'
Kaplan, who worked on Titan for five years, called that game a gigantic MMO that was designed to be like World of Warcraft.
'Overwatch is the opposite of that,' he said. 'This is a six-versus-six competitive shooter at its core. The games were infinite oceans apart in terms of scope.
'When the reboot happened we started Overwatch from scratch.'
While a bit of Overwatch came out of lessons learned with Titan, the developers also saw inspiration in Hearthstone, Blizzard's collectible trading card game.
'Inspiration comes from the weirdest places,' Kaplan said. 'Bizarrely one of the games that inspires us most is Hearthstone right now.
'It's a design aesthetic, how they think about game design; simplicity with a long tale of depth.'
And Hearthstone is a great example of how a game doesn't have to be World of Warcraft to be a tremendous success, he added.
Overwatch, he said, will be Blizzard's first example of a game built in a new universe, in a new genre with a tight scope.
'World of Warcraft is like 10 games in one,' he said. 'I think Overwatch will be an experiment in some sense for us. So we'll see where it goes.'
The rich new universe of Overwatch isn't designed to be a one-off for this single game.
Overwatch takes place in a highly fictionalized version of a future Earth that faces a global crisis. The Overwatch was at one time a sort of United Nations standing peace force before it was disbanded. During the time of the game, some of the heroes of Overwatch want to get the group back together. At least one of the map and its objectives ties into that light storyline, with groups of players trying to launch a satellite into space to help get the organization back up.
The game was announced with a dozen characters, each with unique abilities and play styles. Earlier this month, during PAX East, Blizzard introduced two more characters. And more could be coming.
'We know Overwatch is about a big group of heroes,' Kaplan said. 'We're still trying to figure out what that exact number is. Our initial run was 12 and then we added two more and we feel like the game could support more heroes for sure.'
Though Kaplan said the developers want to make sure they don't have so many characters that their abilities and qualities start to overlap, creating a sort of homogenization that would be dangerous to the game's intent.
That certainly isn't the case yet, at least based on the time I spent with the game trying out futuristic gunslinger McCree and champion-weightlifter-turned-particle-cannon-lugging-heavy Zarya.
McCree is a gangly, Peacekeeper-wielding character that seems designed for stealthy ambushes. His weapon can do massive amounts of damage, including what appeared to be extra damage for headshots, and he has the ability to quickly unload the gun into a target by fanning the six-shooter's hammer. But the real power of McCree is his ultimate Deadeye ability which allows him to slowly lock in all of the visible enemies on screen and then let go a torrent of one-shot kills.
This may sound a bit overpowered, but the time it takes to get a lock-on, and the need to maintain line of sight, helps balance the ability.
I actually found myself dying quite a bit trying to get off not a one or two kill spree, but three or four. That's the killer, it's hard to decide to take the easy kill and not try to wipe out much of the opposing team, which is far riskier.
McCree also has a short-fuse flashbang which explodes a few seconds after he throws it stunning nearby opponents.
The big drawback for the character is that he moves like molasses. Slow and steady is the name of the game with McCree. You can try using his combat roll to speed things up, but that's really meant as a way to quickly reload the gun.
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While I was attracted to McCree's design and weapon choice, it's obvious that as with the other characters in the game, he requires a very specific approach to be successful.
And heavy Zarya is just as specific a character, though with a completely different approach.
Her main ability lets her shoot out a short range beam from her particle cannon to inflict steady damage. She can also use the cannon to lob off explosive charges.
In a support role, Zarya also has the ability to encase herself in a barrier which blocks incoming attacks and makes her weapons more powerful, or project a barrier on another friendly character to do the same thing.
Her ultimate ability seems like it would be a perfect fit with McCree's Deadeye. The Graviton Surge launches a gravity bomb onto the map, pulling in all of the enemies and holding them there as a mass of targets for a few seconds. While trapped, all of the enemies are receiving damage as well.
As with Deadeye, this is one of those abilities that may end up killing you as you try to trap an entire team.
100 percent free spades download full. I found that it typically only sucked in a few enemies, because you'll rarely find a bunch of teammates standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a map.
Zarya's abilities are prefect for a bit of support and charging, allowing her to push into an enemy area and help quickly clear it out.
Ultimately, though, I found myself more tied to McCree. Yes, probably more because of his design than the particular abilities or playstyles he has.
And that's an incredibly important thing for Overwatch and the people designing the game: It has to be set in a universe and peopled with characters that can win over the hearts and minds of players. In fact, each year when Blizzard president and co-founder Michael Morhaime gives the company his 'battleplan' talk one of the things he always reminds everyone is that Blizzard is a company that 'wins over the hearts and minds of gamers,' Kaplan said, adding:
'The two things that we want to get right are to build a universe and a world that is inviting to players, that they want to live in and be a hero in. That can manifest in a number of ways, like the game itself or the announcement trailer. We want people to think, 'That's a cool universe.' No matter what form of medium I'm taking it in through, I like being in there and want more of it.
'The other important thing is to make a really kick-ass game.'
While some may think that second goal is an easy one for the likes of Blizzard, Kaplan says it's not at all.
'It's never easy to make an amazing game,' he said. 'People will say we made World of Warcraft or StarCraft or Diablo, so the next one will be great. No, it's actually harder now.
'There are more expectations on us and more fans, and we owe it more to them to be greater than the last one.'
While Blizzard is starting to see the value in one-off hits, like Hearthstone, it doesn't mean that the company doesn't have bigger plans for this franchise.
'We're not shortsighted by any means,' Kaplan said. 'We need Overwatch to be a great game and the universe to be great and then the next step would be, 'Are they digging it? Do they want more?' And if they want more then, 'Oh my God, we want to make good games.
'I don't want to give the impression that Overwatch is going to have 30 years and see 30 games, But we want to be in that position if this successful.'
And right now things are looking very good for the new franchise.
Recently, the developers began speaking to the eSports community about how the game could fit in to the competitive scene.
'Initially we want to make a great six-versus-six shooter that is approachable to anyone,' Kaplan said. 'The more and more we show it, the more we play it, everyone is talking about pro-sports.'
How Big Is Overwatch Pc
For example, the game's QA team was given a budget for a celebration and they came back to Blizzard and asked if they could use the money for an Overwatch tournament instead, Kaplan said.
They ended up with 70 players in the internal tournament and two programmers who became voluntary shoutcasters.
'Everyone would show up to watch during lunch,' he said. 'We had this moment of, 'Oh my God, this game is going to be huge at eSports we might as well embrace it.'
There was some fear in the pro community, he added, that because the game is designed to be approachable it wouldn't make for a good competitive game. But that talk stopped after Blizzard let a bunch of streamers and pro-gamers get their hands on the title for a bit.
'They started defending the high skill cap in the game,' Kaplan said.
Another concern among Overwatch's growing fanbase is the potential cost of the game, something Kaplan says hasn't been worked out yet.
'We've been reading so many threads [about the possible business model],' he said. 'We actually haven't decided yet what the business model is. We've talked about it. We have a lot of models in mind that we think could work. It's all about figuring out the right one now.'
The game is slated for a closed beta this fall which will allow Blizzard to do some stress testing. Kaplan says under the current plans, it's unlikely that there will be an open beta before the game launches.
'That's sort of the plan right now,' he said. 'That's the way we're trending , but that could change.'
Blizzard cancels its next-gen MMO Titan after seven years