Trying to grind your Overwatch rank on the go? It’s your time to shine, as Overwatch may be landing on the Switch soon.
Multiple sources have confirmed rumors that Overwatch will, in fact, have a port for the Nintendo Switch mobile gaming system. The release was initially leaked per European retail release schedules posted onto online forums; later, Kotaku confirmed the release with their own confidential sources.
The date is listed on the European retail leaks as October 18. This could be an international release date, as Overwatch similarly rolled out a simultaneous launch for the PC edition. However, American console release schedules love Tuesdays for whatever reason, and Nintendo can control release times. Therefore, it could very well also be on the 15th. (Kotaku speculates the 15th as well.)
Fans have already anticipated the reported release; for one, we’ve already seen an Overwatch Switch case leak on Amazon, produced by a reliable Switch case manufacturer. It looked pretty legit, too, as it had all the bells and whistles of the manufacturer’s other similar releases.
It’s absolutely not out of the realm of possibility, and relevant figures have actually expressed interest. In fact, in an AMA, Jeff Kaplan himself said he loved the Switch, but that “getting OW on the Switch is very challenging for us.” Given Blizzard likely runs its own engine for the game, on one hand, the challenge is reasonable. On the other, we’ve already seen Diablo III hit the Switch, along with its own special edition. Plus, it aligns pretty well with Blizzard trying to go “mobile,” per se, with the Diablo Immortal release for mobile phones coming eventually.
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But we suspect that there’s still a few catches in order to actually play the game as intended. Of course, you’ll likely need at least a solid wifi connection in order to connect to the game’s online services. The good news is, if you’ll be utilizing the original-style Switch console and not the Lite, you can always use a LAN adapter. (Don’t get booted mid-game, please!)
Overwatch also typically requires you to at least be on some sort of online service, with the game purchase exclusively attached to your gamer tag, in order to play the game at all. On the PC, that’s Blizzard’s dedicated servers; on other consoles, that’s a Xbox Live or Playstation Network tag. That means there’ll likely be a user restriction of some sorts on the Nintendo Switch using their login system.
As for the price on release, we can’t be too sure. It’s about $30 right now, not discounted for sale, on every other platform. However, they can take a similar approach to their Diablo III release, which is releasing it for $60 initially, followed by an eventual price drop.
We at Fanbyte have been pretty excited for the rumors, too. So much that we have a few ideas for how the Nintendo-Blizzard collaboration could shape up.
