Overwatch is about to begin a bold new era. On February 10, it’s dropping not one, not two, but five heroes into players’ hands, with a full year’s worth of hype-inducing content en route. And, oh, yeah, I didn’t say Overwatch 2, did I? I said Overwatch. Because Blizzard is dropping the digit. We’re going back.
The artist formerly known as Overwatch 2 has had some real hills to climb. The planned PvE mode, which would have offered a story-rich iteration to the live-service hero shooter, was nixed and replaced with quick little missions that totally fizzled out, anyway. Overwatch fans are fierce about the characters they love, and frequently committed to consuming every ounce of lore they can get their hands on, so the cancelation of a more narrative-savvy approach went over very, very, poorly.
Yet, things are looking up. They’re really coming up roses right now. So much hype is hitting in anticipation of the new season, in fact, that even where the game has never pulled in its biggest player count, it is rising up the charts to a notable degree.
Even You, Steam?
When it launched over two years ago, Overwatch 2 hit a Steam CCU peak of 75,608. Now, that doesn’t necessarily sound terrific for a big-budget live-service title, and all things being equal, it wouldn’t be. But the game has always enjoyed comparably robust figures on Battle.net, to say nothing of its popular performance on home consoles. Simply put, Steam has never been the best gauge for Overwatch.
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Yet, success can still be ascertained when those launch numbers, however modest they might seem out of context, are nearly achieved all over again. I need to emphasize, the new season isn’t out yet. These are people who are coming back in preparation for it; none of the “season one” content that’s poised to bring Overwatch 2 into a new era is even here yet. So, when you see 67,844 people logged into the hero shooter on the weekend prior to Blizzard’s huge moment, you know something’s up.
In fact, while everything’s relative in life, it’s worth noting that Overwatch even has a leg up on Battlefield 6 right now. As of this writing, Dice’s well-received FPS is trailing just slightly behind. I don’t expect this to hold for long, but it’s testament to Overwatch’s newfound success, especially when we factor in the fact that, unlike Overwatch, Battlefield does tend to put its best foot forward in Steam-based metrics.
It’s interesting times for Overwatch. The rebranding, the reimagining, it’s all here, and we’ll soon see what sort of staying power it adds to a now-classic IP.
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