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Regarding the period as a time of 'necessary challenge'.
"Hello everyone and welcome back to another GRTV News, today we're going to be talking a little bit about yesterday's Overwatch Spotlight, because tomorrow we're going to be talking about the Nintendo Direct most likely as that is happening later today. The reason I also wanted to talk about the Overwatch Spotlight today is because last week I had the opportunity to go to Blizzard to learn all about this and this big sort of, it's not really an evolution, more of a big update coming to Overwatch, as they described it as sort of a return to form for the game. And one of the things during that trip to Blizzard that I had the opportunity to do was pose a few questions to the Overwatch leadership, that including Walter Kong and Aaron Keller and various other members of the executive upper parts of the Overwatch team."
"And I asked them a question about Overwatch 2 particularly because I wanted to know about with the decision to drop the 2, how they look back on that Overwatch 2 era and they gave quite an interesting answer, so let's dive on in. So yes, Blizzard on the Overwatch 2 era, it was a necessary period of challenge, so we asked the Overwatch leadership about dropping the sequel numeral which is not regarded as an admission of mistake. So Overwatch has been a fascinating game to follow as it started as one of the most promising and exciting multiplayer projects we had seen in some time. It received great acclaim, won trophies and awards, saw strong post-launch support and generally speaking, all the stars seemed to be aligning that the future was very, very bright. Then things began slipping away as Blizzard probed for a sequel, leaving the original game rather barren and lifeless, before moving on to a numbered follow-up that left a lot to be desired. With the rise of Marvel rivals and other hit hero shooters, Blizzard needed to go big with Overwatch as part of the annual spotlight and in our experience, it has achieved this feat."
"But dropping the 2 begs the question as to whether even Blizzard regards the evolution to Overwatch 2 to be a successful endeavour, a question gamers had to pose to Overwatch leadership during a press conference at the developer's Irvine headquarters in California. When asked about whether the Overwatch 2 era was a success in Blizzard's eyes and if it would have done anything differently, in hindsight, the developer told us. What would I do differently? Sorry, what would I change if I could go back? Probably not call it Overwatch 2. Chuckles, head of live games mobile development, Walter Kong. When I look back at that period, I do think it was a positive period for us as we made an important transition. We made a transition to an ongoing live game and that wasn't easy, it was really, really hard. I credit the leaders and the team for shepherding the organisation through that. I could see with time on the team that became something that felt more natural to deliver seasonal content and it felt more natural to respond to players. So I think it was a necessary period of challenge that we had to get through to get to where we are today."
"I don't think we could jump straight here, so while I think it would be, just thinking back on what we experienced makes me feel a bit exhausted during those years, but I think it's what allowed us to take Overwatch to the future. Game director Aaron Keller then expanded further. He said it's always difficult to look at the past and then decide the things that you would do differently because we're in a position where we had a game we were running that we need to figure out what the best way was to run that game. I think that if you look at the past few years, what we've done with Overwatch is we've really focused on that core competitive PvE experience and yes, that is different than some of what Overwatch 2 was envisioned to be. What we started hearing from players as we put more and more time and energy and resources into continuously improving the game was that it did feel like we had earned the 2. I don't think that moving forward this isn't an omission of mistake, this is us really saying our vision and our commitment to the future of Overwatch is for this live service, is for this always on forever lifestyle game. So Keller rounds out with, and I think one thing to recognise the way I look at games like this and players for it, is they need to have confidence in the game and the team in the present in order to be able to invest time in the game into the game in the future. So what we've been doing for the last two years is developing that trust with our players and part of what season one is about is that now we have that trust we're using it to go as big as we possibly can and do and to push this game to the next level and hopefully give even more players that confidence they can jump into play Overwatch because it's going to be here for years to come. So big hopes from Blizzard for the future of Overwatch, what the developer did make clear however is that the cadence proposed for 2026 including 10 new heroes over the calendar year might not match future years. Blizzard expressed it will look at various ways to bolster the game perhaps with some fresh maps, maybe hero reworks or additional ideas beyond this. The point is 2026 looks to be a great return to form for Overwatch and all being well it will stay in form for many years to come."
"More on Overwatch see our report on the Switch 2 edition of the game here with some exclusive added extras about how the game has been designed to fit the handheld platform.
So yeah quite an interesting way to look at it I mean I don't necessarily regard Overwatch 2 as a complete and utter failure but I do think they made a mistake with the way that they went and I don't think it was a mistake that particularly just defined Overwatch 2 I think that they started or that the mistakes started creeping out 18 maybe even longer maybe two and a half years before Overwatch 2 came out and that's a long period of time and you could see it because if anyone who has played Overwatch will know that the last 18 months of Overwatch 1 were pretty rough the game basically had no new content it was incredibly stale but everyone was kind of treating it like we know that this is rough right now but the sequel's coming so when the sequel lands this period of of almost complete barren drabness where we've been playing literally well this is supposed to not it wasn't necessarily like a full live game that time but it was a game that had this promise for the future this promise of commitment but we've been playing the exact same version of that game for x amount of you know months now when the new sequel when the sequel drops it will be it will feel fresh and new so there was always that hope despite the fact that you know after a year of literally having basically nothing new added to the game you started almost losing a little bit of confidence in it and then Overwatch 2 came out and it just didn't feel like they'd really delivered on that promise at all the pve was I would go as far as saying the pve was a failure I don't think they did that well at all uh there was limited new amounts of additional content if anything you could probably say the biggest change from overwatch to overwatch 2 was the sort of engine changes and all the way that the game had sort of been evolved in regards to how it looks and how it and how it's put together in sort of a like a code mindset but from like a content standpoint it didn't feel like a sequel and I think it's taken blizzard a few years to sort of get back on track and to me this this change that they or the information they shared at the spotlight last night it finally does seem like that turning point a little bit that maybe overwatch has a chance to regain that faith and you could argue the blizzard executives as I say but you could argue that it's been pushed on them because of the success of marvel rivals you could say that and it's probably partly true um but hopefully this also means that from a development standpoint all the years of sort of you know middling almost support for the game hopefully that means that now they can move past that and they've got a good baseline that they can build on and continue to really support overwatch and really let this game blossom and grow and and and expand into something the thing that many of us I think hoped it would become after the first couple of years of overwatch one where the future looks so bright and it looks such a strong game to be part of so we'll stay tuned but um I do think it's an interesting way to look at it because on one hand you've got the head of live games and mobile development saying that it was a period of necessary change and then the other hand you've got the game director saying it dropping the sequel number isn't an admission of guilt so it's I don't really know what I don't really think blizzard really knew what they were doing when they were looking at overwatch 2 as a whole but either way uh overwatch the 2026 content will start or yeah will really kick off next week in game but I think as of right now you can actually boot up the game and you can play one of the new heroes that's coming out the uh the dps character anran so check that out and otherwise yeah for more on overwatch stay tuned because we'll have plenty of coverage coming so yeah stay tuned for that and otherwise yeah thank you for joining me today I'll be back tomorrow for the my final gse news of the week which will probably be talking about something that happens in the direct later today and uh yeah otherwise I hope you enjoy the rest of your Thursday so I'll see you on the next one take care everyone"
