Overwatch Delayed to 2023 or later.

[Femininity]

Per IGN:

In an SEC filing Activision Blizzard confirmed that it was anticipating a financial uplift from the release of Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4 in 2022, but that is no longer the case after the delay. While Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4 never received an official release window, it appears the company was targeting 2022, but now both titles are expected in 2023 or beyond.

Lame. Was hoping to be free of the 6v6 meta cycle.

[Vellus]

So conceptually this means no new characters are expected to be added to the game for 3 years. That's healthy for the game.

Maybe they can kill two birds with one stone here by replacing the female models with bowls of fruit

[Kaleredar]

I do really wonder... why? There didn't seem to be all that much that needed doing, and unless they were working on a lot more stuff under the hood that they were planning for release like maps and heroes the that turned out not to work out, the number of things that we saw them actively working on that went south isn't very large.

My biggest guess is that some critical gameplay system they were banking on turned out to not work out. And if I had to guess, it'd be the single player stuff.

The notion that "repeat the same encounters on a handful of maps, just with interchangeable mindless enemies with random buffs to make it artificially more challenging" makes for rewarding content is a pretty poor one. It didn't really work for islands/torghast in WoW, it hasn't worked to keep people occupied with Diablo 3, and it's not particularly interesting in Overwatch itself when you look at the "permutations" of the archives/junkenstein events when the enemies are given random gimmicks but the map and mission stay exactly the same.

[Orby]

cool I'll be 40 years old when it releases lol

Oh my god I am getting old <sobs>

[uuuhname]

I do really wonder... why? There didn't seem to be all that much that needed doing, and unless they were working on a lot more stuff under the hood that they were planning for release like maps and heroes the that turned out not to work out, the number of things that we saw them actively working on that went south isn't very large.

My biggest guess is that some critical gameplay system they were banking on turned out to not work out. And if I had to guess, it'd be the single player stuff.

The notion that "repeat the same encounters on a handful of maps, just with interchangeable mindless enemies with random buffs to make it artificially more challenging" makes for rewarding content is a pretty poor one. It didn't really work for islands/torghast in WoW, it hasn't worked to keep people occupied with Diablo 3, and it's not particularly interesting in Overwatch itself when you look at the "permutations" of the archives/junkenstein events when the enemies are given random gimmicks but the map and mission stay exactly the same.

I do hope it's to make an entire single player campaign that feels polished and has replayability be the central pull. I agree the way it's been implemented in other Blizzard games has been severely lacking so one can only hope this breaks that trend...

[Hotmail]

That's a lot of delayed rule 34

[Khaza-R]

Will be interesting to see how their IP really weathers this.

Overwatch isn't exactly an established franchise. I think delaying OW2 too much really risks losing interest

[Dakhath]

Hopefully we get a map or two if not a new hero because of the delay, not going to hold my breath though.

[Kaleredar]

I do hope it's to make an entire single player campaign that feels polished and has replayability be the central pull. I agree the way it's been implemented in other Blizzard games has been severely lacking so one can only hope this breaks that trend...

Yeah. The sort of system they were designing for OW2 really struck me as very Torghast-like... a handful of enemy types, a handful of maps (some of which were just alterations of maps we'd already seen) and to "keep it fun and interesting" they just get random buffs here and there and you get to develop insanely OP things for your character (In the case of Torghast anima powers, in the case of OW2 talents that enhance your abilities in PvE only)

But like I said, that doesn't really work for long-term engagement. Especially in a game like OW where the main focus is PvP and none of what you'd do in the singleplayer stuff transfers because character power isn't a thing like it is in WoW.

If that's indeed what's wrong, and indeed what they're trying to fix, good on them. But it's also something that would take an enormous amount of work, and the OW team always seemed to be by far the smallest of their main IP teams (with most of the seasonal art stuff contracted out to other studios to be modeled/textured after having been visually developed by one or two people.)

That structure simply isn't conducive to designing dozens and dozens of new maps and enemies, along with the heroes and maps they're already designing for the game. So I've the sneaking suspicion they were going down that "the same thing with added randomness makes it different, from a mathematical perspective!" strategy for a handful of maps and enemies and calling that the PvE mode.

[Zainbilal]

Gaes is bbeing deleyed as eery one saw the result of cyberpunk now every company will consider about release without fixing bugs