A few months back, during BlizzConline, Blizzard gave some non-committal answers about whether Overwatch would join the likes of several of its competitors and integrate cross-play, allowing players from all four platforms the game is on to play together. Well, the team has finally announced it’s rolling out the feature in a beta phase, but it does have a few caveats.
In a developer update, director Aaron Kelly broke down how the system will work. But the long and short of it is: cross-play is coming, but cross-progression is still in the works. Anyone who wants to play with other platforms will need to make a Battle.net account to link their Overwatch games to other systems. However, Competitive Play will still be divided by consoles and PC. There will be a bit of division between console (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Switch) and PC all around; however, console users will only be matched with PC players if they’re part of a team that includes PC players. Also worth noting: console users can turn off cross-play, but PC players will have it on by default and cannot opt-out.
Check out the developer update here:
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Right now, the cross-play features are in beta, with a public rollout expected to follow “soon,” according to the official FAQ on the matter. Personally? I’m just excited to finally play with several friends who have been divided from my Overwatch experience since I started playing two years ago. I’ve put over a thousand hours into the game on PS4 and have been moving away from it lately, but being able to play with my friends on Xbox and PC is a shot in the arm to get me back to pushing payloads.