Blizzard doesn't mess around. As one of the biggest names in gaming, the company has only three IPs: Diablo, Starcraft, and Warcraft. The last time the company debuted a new world was in 1998, almost two decades ago. That alone is enough to make Overwatch, releasing next Tuesday, a huge deal. But there's more on the line than the one of the strongest reputations in the gaming world, Diablo 3 and all. There's a big shift happening in the way people think about gaming on PC, PS4 and Xbox One, and Overwatch represents perhaps the biggest test of that yet.
Multiplayer-only shooters are nothing new. We saw it way back in the early days of the Xbox One with Titanfall, with mixed results at best. Publishers are understandably excited: multiplayer games are better at selling DLC, don't require big, expensive campaigns and adapt better over the course of years and months. A game like Uncharted 4 is something of a one and done, but a game like League of Legends can live forever. That's music to a public company's ears. So far, however, it's been a mixed bag: Titanfall didn't do all that well, Evolve is more or less dead, and Star Wars: Battlefront succeeded, but I'd argue that was largely due to the strength of the Star Wars license. Battleborn is solid, but it's got some real issues, and I just can't see it going the distance.
PC, as usual, leads the way. All of the trends we've seen recently -- microtransactions, MMOS, freee to play, multipalyer only, and even DLC writ large, started on PC and made their way to console. It's a different market, but the two are looking more and more similar every day. And I think Overwatch stands a good chance at being the game that really breaks through a a major, successful AAA multiplayer-only shooter that launches strong and keeps it up over the long haul. This is Blizzard, after all, and the game is both slick as all get out and marketed to hell and back. A game like Titanfall felt like Call of Duty with no campaign, but Overwatch is unquestionably it's own thing, and so it produces an itch that can't be scratched elsewhere. And while it hasn't released yet, I've played enough of it to know that it's fun. It's much more fun than Evolve, for example. This is an important part of the whole equation.
MMOs on consoles are real. Destiny has proven that, and The Division has too, albeit less successfully. These things are next. This trend will continue whether or not Overwatch proves to be the tipping point. The prospect of a console game capable of producing MOBA style consistent revenue is too strong to ignore. But I've got a feeling this might be the one to make it happen.
