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Interest in the hero-shooter is very high once again.
"Hello everyone and welcome back to another GRTV News.
Today we're going to be talking a little bit, once again, about a Blizzard game.
I've been talking a lot about Blizzard games on GRTV News as of recent and it's just because there's a lot that's happening in regards to Blizzard this time of year."
"The game we're going to be talking about now, after we've talked about it recently, is also Overwatch.
Because of the fact that the big Season 1 update for 2026 has arrived, and as expected, after seeing what was in it, there was always this impression that it was going to draw a lot of players, that it was going to really reach out to its audience, and clearly it has so far."
"Now, granted, it's Day 1, so we'll see whether it can maintain these player numbers in the grand scheme of things, but so far it's already smashed its concurrent player record on Steam, so it shows that people are flocking back to the game, that people are excited to return to Overwatch and see how Blizzard are continuing to support it."
"So yes, Overwatch just broke its record for the number of concurrent players.
The huge patch released recently seems to have done the trick, and it looks like quite a few returning and new fans have given it a shot.
When Overwatch 2 was released just over three years ago, many felt that it was a bit lacklustre, with limited new features, and the few that did exist received significant criticism."
"This has led to a decline in player numbers.
Fortunately, Blizzard has listened to feedback and decided to address the issues, and yesterday released what is perhaps the largest patch to the series ever.
You can check out all the new features at this link, but be prepared to buy a new mouse afterwards, as there is a serious risk that your scroll wheel will wear out from the enormous amount of text you have to scroll through."
"And apparently the message about the huge update has been heard.
SteamDB now notes that Overwatch 2 has set a new Steam player record.
Four hours ago, at the time of writing, there were 165,651 concurrent gamers online, which is more than it has ever had before, and more than twice as many as at launch."
"Whether Overwatch 2 will be able to retain its audience in the long term remains to be seen, of course, but we can at least say that it has got off to a good start.
And let's just have a look, see if it changed overnight.
So no, it hasn't. It's still at the peak, was still the 165,000."
"But 70,000 people playing online right now is quite good.
It's quite strong numbers for Overwatch, especially considering the fact that Steam is probably not the predominant place that people are going to be playing Overwatch.
It's going to be battle.net when you look at the PC audience."
"So yeah, not too shabby that.
So yeah, it looks like the interest is there.
Again, Blizzard has a long road ahead of itself, and saying that this patch, that this update is going to be the big sort of fix that gets everyone back on board with Overwatch is frankly incorrect."
"They need to do a lot more, and they're going to have to completely or continue to support the game for a long time to ensure that these player numbers are maintained.
Now, they can do it because Overwatch has an enormous player base.
There's a lot of people that have checked out Overwatch in the past, and there are a lot of people that are very fond of this game, to the point that if they can get them back on board, they have an audience that can tap into about 100 million players or something mega."
"So there's definitely potential for Overwatch to get back to that point.
Blizzard just needs to maintain the support.
They just need to make sure that they continuously pump out new content for the game and keep people interested in it.
That's the challenge that this game is now going to face in the long term."
"But it seems like Blizzard understands what they need to do with the game a little bit more now, unlike where they were when Overwatch 2 launched, when I don't think they quite really understood what they needed to do to make a live service game.
In 2026, I think they finally figured that out, and I think that it's only going to be up and up now for Overwatch, but we'll have to see in the long term."
"So let's see where this goes.
But so far, it's been a strong start for Overwatch.
But yeah, that's all the time that I have on today's episode of GRTV News, a snappier and quicker one, but I'll be back now tomorrow for the next one of the week."
"As for what that will be, not too sure.
We do have a State of Play coming, but it's on Thursday evening, so it'll be a Friday GRTV News that we talk about some of the big reveals from that State of Play.
Otherwise, thank you for joining me, and I'll see you all on the next GRTV News tomorrow."
