In a tweet (opens in new tab), the Ybarra said: “Blizzard is a big studio and we have talented and growing teams supporting live games as well. Over the coming weeks, you’ll be hearing more on that from Warcraft and Overwatch. Diablo will follow. Stay tuned!”

Blizzard is a big studio and we have talented and growing teams supporting live games as well. Over the coming weeks, you’ll be hearing more on that from Warcraft and Overwatch. Diablo will follow. Stay tuned!January 25, 2022

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Ybarra’s tweet was in response to a fan who criticised the fact Blizzard is working on a survival game set in “a whole new universe.” This new project was announced yesterday alongside some concept art and job listings in a blog post on the official Blizzard website.  

Updates on these beloved Blizzard franchises has got to be good news to fans, especially considering we haven’t heard too much about Overwatch 2 since it was announced in 2019. It was recently claimed that Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick contributed to delays with months of lost dev time and that not only Overwatch 2 but Diablo 4 have been pushed out of 2022 so they reach their “full potential.” Last we heard about Diablo 4, the game had reached “a significant milestone,” but we still shouldn’t expect the game to release this year.

In case you missed it, Microsoft recently announced that it was buying Activision for almost $70 billion. This means any studios under the Activision brand – including Blizzard, King, Toys for Bob, Raven Software, and more – will soon belong to Microsoft. Don’t worry just yet though, Activision games will still be enjoyed on a variety of platforms despite Xbox takeover. 

Want to find out what else you can look forward to this year? Take a look at our new games 2021 list. 

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Just earlier today on August 27, Activision Blizzard announced through a press release that a new map was live for Overwatch’s Public Test Server on PC. This map is called Malevento, and it’s exclusively a free-for-all deathmatch map originating from Italy.

While the new Malevento map is available right now on PC for Overwatch, it’ll be another month before it joins the full game. Malevento will be eventually going live in Overwatch for all players on all platforms outside the PTR next month on September 28.

This is the first news we’ve had from the original Overwatch in a while, despite the fact that Blizzard is still keep to support its original game. It’s also been a fair while since we last saw or heard anything from Overwatch 2, the highly anticipated sequel to the original Blizzard hero shooter.

News sprung up from the sequel in the weeks following late May 2021 however, when Blizzard originally revealed that they would be cutting the player count in PvP games of Overwatch 2 from six to five per side. Shortly after that, it was announced that Overwatch 2’s maps would feature dynamic weather cycles, before the game’s technical director commented that Overwatch 2 on the Nintendo Switch would feature “some compromises.” More recently, a rumor claimed Overwatch 2 might not be launching until at least 2023.

You can read up on our Activision Blizzard lawsuit explained feature for a complete report on the lawsuit currently facing the Overwatch publisher and developer.

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This week, Overwatch finally initiated cross-play between console and PC platforms, over five years after it originally released in 2016. While this should have been a pretty momentous occassion for Blizzard’s online hero shooter, it’s now being talked about for another reason entirely.

It turns out the new cross-play update has changed the way players are placed into lobbies and regions. Simply speaking, the update has removed the option to select a region if you’re playing solo, and has effectively merged all regions, so now if you’re playing Overwatch in the UK for example, you could be automatically placed into a sever in North America.

The update has made it so that anyone playing Overwatch can be placed into any datacentre in the world, no matter how far away they are from it. According to Blizzard technical support, as you can see in the tweets just below, this is to help players find a match during periods of low player counts, but it’s resulting in some players registering over 100ms ping, drastically increasing the game’s reaction times whenever they move, shoot, or use an ability.

ANYONE from ANY region can be placed onto different servers to help queue times. While yes, it will help queue times, it makes the game horrid to play. 170+ ping to KR server or 120 to EU in ranked is pain. pic.twitter.com/yk54DgrUzHJune 22, 2021

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As you can probably imagine, this has caused a pretty significant uproar among the Overwatch community, with players being placed into datacentres on the opposite side of the world. Even Overwatch League personnel are speaking out against the changes made by the game’s development team, as seen in the tweet below from OWL analyst and former pro Scott Kennedy.

So…. Am I supposed to get randomly placed into a KR server playing from NA these days?Is this intended with the crossplay or a bug? pic.twitter.com/473Z9JMKTnJune 22, 2021

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It’s hard to guess where Overwatch goes from here. The changes have obviously been made with good intentions, aiming to reduce queue times for solo players who want to get a quick game in, but it’s the unfortunate side effect of taking away the option to pick your region that is really upsetting the game’s community. We’ll have to wait and see what Blizzard chooses to do in the face of all this feedback.

For everything you need to know about the game’s forthcoming sequel, head over to our complete guide on Overwatch 2 for more.

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In a new developer update (opens in new tab) posted yesterday, Kaplan discussed everything new that will be coming to the original Overwatch in the coming weeks, including new maps, cars, and more. Kaplan also touched on Overwatch 2, confirming that we will see more of the game at the BlizzCon Online event in February next year.

He said, “Even more so, I think we’re excited for the future. Can’t wait to talk to you more about Overwatch 2, can’t wait to show you more with Overwatch 2. We know it’s been too long, we know we’ve been quiet, and we still have a ways to go, just to manage expectations.”

BlizzCon Online is an alternative event to Blizzard’s annual convention where they would usually make announcements, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, an online event will take its place. BlizzCon Online 2021 will take place on February 19th-20th.

In January earlier this year, it was rumoured that Overwatch 2 would be coming to PS4 in 2020, but we can now debunk that leak because it looks like we’ll be seeing more of the sequel in February 2021 instead.

Overwatch 2 was announced during BlizzCon 2019, where Blizzard debuted the first cinematic trailer and later revealed gameplay for the upcoming sequel. The PvP shooter will expand the world of Overwatch, as well as it’s lore and characters, with a brand new story focus, in a player versus environment mode. Overwatch 2 will also include modes and co-op missions that are different to its 2016 predecessor, along with a big visual upgrade.

If you’re still looking for that last-minute Christmas present, here’s our best gifts for gamers.

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Is Overwatch PS5 backwards compatible? 

Yes, Overwatch is one of the many backward compatible games on the PS5. Either your digital or physical copy will work without any extra steps. In terms of progress and player stats, since accounts are tied with Battle.net in the PlayStation console family, you won’t have to start from scratch. 

How does Overwatch run on PS5? 

This is where things get a bit more fuzzy. At the moment there’s only one version of Overwatch that is compatible with both the previous and current gen, so you should expect the same experience in almost all regards. But of course, the new hardware (including both the GPU and the SSD drive) presents a slight but noticeable upgrade.

The PS4 version didn’t exactly run bad, but there were some minor hiccups, including delayed load times when jumping into the hero select screen, and a decrease in frame rate whenever there was an intense encounter happening in a match. Over at Forbes, the author mentions that “the PS5 fixes all of those”, and now it only takes “a couple seconds to load into a map with your hero model in place”. In Polygon’s report, they talk about how performance remained stable even during busy fights, and that seeing a low-texture model of a hero before they load in the character screen is now a thing of the past.

Navigating menus is reportedly faster, and there’s an slight advantage over PS4 users (players from both consoles can play together seamlessly) when picking a character as you’re usually inside the match first, making it the perfect opportunity to call dibs on your favourite.

Are there plans for an Overwatch PS5 upgrade or patch?

Many studios have started sharing their plans for next-gen, but what about Blizzard? Well, up until the time of publication, we still don’t know what to expect. Overwatch 2 is still far off, but it’s safe to assume the experience will arrive tailored to the PS5 from the get-go. At the moment, however, it’s unsure whether or not we’ll see a patch that takes its predecessor to similar results, either unlocking the framerate or allowing for higher resolutions, as it is the case for Rainbow Six: Siege which targets 120 FPS and 4K support.

But even if we have to wait a bit longer to truly experience Overwatch at its maximum capabilities on PS5, rest assured that you’ll be able to continue ranking and pursuing legendary skins in a slightly refined manner thanks to the PS5 power.

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Echo is a highly adaptable damage hero with an Ultimate that transforms her into a chosen enemy and inherit each of their abilities for 15 seconds. It’s been a long wait filled with plenty of teasers for Echo, but now’s the time we can finally fill her robot shoes in normal and ranked games. You can catch up on some of the lore behind Overwatch’s newest hero here (opens in new tab) or in the original story below.

Original story as follows…

Overwatch (opens in new tab) has a new hero, and it’s one we’ve been expecting. 

Echo is an “evolutionary robot programmed with a rapidly adapting artificial intelligence”, created by Dr. Mina Liao. According to the video, Liao was part of the team responsible for the Omnics, who eventually rose up against their human creators. She created Echo as a means of coping with her guilt, and hopefully rectifying the mistakes she made when creating the omnics – that’s why it’s important to note that Echo is not an omnic, but functions as more of an “echo” of Mina Liao’s consciousness (think Cortana from the Halo series). 

From the video, it seems like Liao was the victim of an attack at her laboratory, most likely by the omnics themselves. After creating the omnics, Liao turned to Overwatch to help her build Echo – it seems like the team believed in her ideas and helped facilitate Echo’s creation. “She created me, her promise, her legacy, her echo,” the robot says at the end of the video.

That’s why we’ve seen Echo with the Overwatch team before, most notably in two different shorts. She first appeared in the McCree and Ashe short “Reunion (opens in new tab),” where the gunslingers battle over a train’s cargo that houses Echo’s pod. McCree awakens Echo, welcoming her back into the fold. We also saw Echo in the announcement trailer (opens in new tab) for Overwatch 2 (opens in new tab), as part of the cavalry of Overwatch heroes Tracer’s always banging on about. Echo’s voice has sounded pretty different in each of the three videos she’s in, but it’s clear from this most recent one that she has a serene, calming voice, not unlike my girl Mercy. 

No word yet on what type of hero Echo will be, or when she’ll debut in Overwatch. She could very well be a new DPS character, based on the Overwatch 2 trailer which shows her flying in and raining fire down on omnics. Considering the last two heroes were a tank (Sigma) and a support (Baptiste), it seems like it’s time for a new DPS character.

Stay tuned, we’ll keep you posted on the latest Overwatch and Echo news as it comes across our desks. 

Big in 2020: Overwatch 2 will redefine the video game sequel (opens in new tab). 

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Microsoft hasn’t said much about the possibility of an Xbox Series X delay (opens in new tab) so far, sticking to the “Holiday 2020” launch window it’s had for years (aside from a brief interlude where it accidentally narrowed the date down to Thanksgiving (opens in new tab)). A console launch is made of a lot of moving parts, though, and one of the most important is having the right set of launch games ready to go.

In an interview with IGN (opens in new tab), Spencer said Microsoft is unlikely to divert its plans even a tentpole like Halo: Infinite isn’t ready in time.

“I think for us, hardware and system and service software, those two things have to stay linked,” Spencer explained. “I don’t want to ship a piece of hardware where the platform’s not completely there. I’ll just laugh and say maybe we’ve done that before. We’re not gonna do that again. So the system, software, and the platform have gotta be solid for us to do anything.

“I do think that if everything was there, for the software, the services, and the hardware, I don’t think I would hold it for any individual game. Obviously the one you think about is Halo, it’s iconic with the launch. [343 Industries studio head Bonnie Ross] and the team are doing a really good job on Halo: Infinite right now. They’re learning on the job just like we all are. I think we’ll go in eyes wide open on what we’re trying to get done, but I don’t think we would hold the launch of the overall platform on any individual game. I think we just have to be very transparent with people on where we are and how we’re trending.”

With E3 2020 canceled, Spencer said his team is also thinking on the fly about how it will roll out more information about Xbox Series X. The first step was its Xbox Game Stack presentation, where it debuted the console in person, and more will follow.

“We’ll do things between now and the time when E3 was supposed to be, we’ll do things throughout the summer,” Spencer said. “I think we’re just gonna look at how teams can get stuff ready, and how we can best use digital experiences to best deliver experiences to the fans that we have, because that’s just the sane way to do this.”

Check out what you could be playing on your new console with our guide to upcoming Xbox Series X games

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The Cinematic Art of Overwatch is up on Amazon (opens in new tab) right now, with pre-orders open for $45. The final collection will span 244 pages, with a coffee table book sized selection of visuals pulled from across the animation process as well as written accounts of their development. Here’s the official synopsis:

“Starting with the announcement trailer in 2014, Overwatch’s award-winning cinematics captured the hearts of millions across the world, introducing them to a hopeful science-fiction world where heroes are needed.

“Crafting these animated shorts required the Blizzard cinematics team to explore new ways of animated film making with a bold new art style, more frequent releases, and intimate collaboration with the game team. The Cinematic Art of Overwatch chronicles this journey, featuring never-before-seen art and anecdotes that illustrate how Overwatch’s richly imagined characters and world were brought to life through cinematic storytelling.”

Blizzard has a long history of impressive cinematic trailers – I still get chills when I watch the original opening video for World of Warcraft. Since Overwatch (the game) is all about non-canonical PvP battles, the Blizzard cinematic team got to take more of a lead in telling the stories behind the characters and events that shaped its near-future story.

The lore’s filled out with comic books and short stories and stuff like that, too, but the videos are what really help draw new players in – whether it’s the sadness and hope of Echo’s origins (opens in new tab) or the stirring reunion of the Overwatch 2 intro (opens in new tab).

Speaking of emotional impact, Blizzard put googly eyes on all the Overwatch heroes. You can read all about it in our April Fools’ Day 2020 round-up (opens in new tab). 

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Ashe’s Mardi Gras Challenge runs from February 25 to March 9, during which you’ll be able to get six sprays, two player icons, and an epic (and I mean, truly epic) Ashe and Bob skin. The skin has big Mardi Gras energy, with Ashe donning a masquerade mask and Bob wearing a full set of beads (how did he get them, I’m just curious). Wins in Quick Play, Competitive Play, or Arcade will earn you the rewards, with nine wins netting you the fantastic Ashe skin.

You can earn even more rewards by watching Twitch streamers during or after matches: five Ashe’s Mardi Gras Challenge sprays, to be exact. You’ll get one spray for watching two hours, two sprays for watching four, and two more sprays for watching six hours. 

But Ashe’s Mardi Gras Challenge isn’t the only thing to celebrate this week – Experimental card is joining the ranks for both PC and console players. This new mode will let Overwatch players test out gameplay changes, not unlike the public test realm on PC (except it’s in the live game). You’ll be able to earn experience and earn loot boxes while playing in this new mode, so it’s clear Blizzard really wants to get more players’ input on upcoming changes to the meta. Any change introduced in the Experimental mode is not guaranteed to end up in the live game, so don’t panic when you see the first test: triple DPS, ack (opens in new tab)!

Big in 2020: Overwatch 2 will redefine the video game sequel.  (opens in new tab)

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Baptiste’s primary fire will now take .45 seconds to recover, compared to .36 seconds before the update. Likewise, his secondary fire’s heal explosion is being reduced from 60 to 50. Other highlights include a reduction to Hanzo’s Storm Arrow damage from 70 to 60, reductions to Sigma’s primary fire range from 22 to 20 meters and Accretion explosion damage from 60 to 40, and a reduction to Reaper’s healing from 40% to 30% of damage dealt.

Perhaps the biggest surprise here is McCree’s 25% HP increase, not to mention a change to Deadeye that unlocks your aim when firing. Granted, Peacekeeper’s recovery time is being increased from .42 seconds to .5, but that’s a compromise most McCree mains will gladly accept given the massive buff to HP.

The patch is available now on the PTR for PC players, but is likely on its way to the PS4, Xbox One, and Switch versions. You’ll find the complete patch notes with every nerf, buff, and bug fix here, and you can voice your support or frustration for the patch over on Blizzard’s PTR Feedback forum.

With the follow-up on its way this year, Alyssa explored how Overwatch 2 will redefine the video game sequel and shape the conversation in 2020.

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