In its most up-to-date Q2 2023 earnings launch, Activision Blizzard reported that Overwatch 2 “engagement and participant funding” had declined over the previous quarter. Based on Overwatch 2 govt producer Jared Neuss, the falling participant numbers are “nothing regarding” and ought to be handled as “a traditional ebb and circulate of gamers.”
Overwatch 2: Invasion is anticipated to spice up participant numbers
Overwatch 2: Invasion is the sport’s sixth season and launched yesterday, August 10. Amongst the brand new content material is a brand new hero Illari, a brand new Flashpoint recreation mode, the premium Invasion story missions, and a brand new battle go. Throughout the identical earnings launch, the writer defined the way it was anticipating the most important seasonal replace but to spice up the decrease participant numbers. Nonetheless, Neuss downplayed that this huge season was some kind of do-or-die second for the shooter in an interview with IGN and extra of the crew determining the right way to tempo its seasonal choices.
There’s this fascinating factor about how we stacked a bunch of content material on Overwatch 2 Invasion. We did that as a result of we have been experimenting with completely different seasonal buildings, and one of many issues we actually needed to strive was, what if we simply put all this massive stuff, these superior additions, and completely different expressions of the sport collectively?
That basically isn’t like a, ‘oh there’s a lot driving on this’ sort of a factor for us. For us it’s actually about, what does an excellent season appear to be? We’ve tried a bunch of stuff, proper? We tried a really thematic strategy with Season 5. We’ve tried various things in Season 2 and three.
It’s much less about, ‘is there all these things driving on Overwatch 2: Invasion?’ and extra about, ‘what do we predict is the suitable rhythm and cadence, and the way can we create these massive moments for gamers?’
He additionally went on to say the crew isn’t involved by what he considers to be the traditional fluctuation in participant numbers for a free-to-play recreation.
The declining stuff is principally, we’re a free-to-play recreation and it is vitally simple to each come to the sport and test it out, and to depart to take a look at different stuff,” Neuss mentioned. “We see a traditional ebb and circulate of gamers. There’s nothing regarding to me or the crew about any of that.
Sadly for Blizzard, participant response to the sport has not gotten considerably higher with Season 6. Overwatch 2 launched on Steam on August 10 and shortly garnered an “Overwhelmingly Unfavorable” ranking from gamers. The commonest criticism is the dearth of the promised PvE mode, which was downscaled to make method for the smaller story missions. The price of the story missions and restricted methods gamers can unlock heroes are two different sizeable complaints being leveled on the sequel.
