Overwatch

In recent weeks, Activision Blizzard has been at the center of considerable controversy, following a lawsuit from California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing that alleged far-reaching sexism, harassment, and abuse at the company. Amid a series of departures from high-ranking employees at the company - including former Blizzard president J. Allen Brack - Blizzard has now revealed that it will be changing the name of Overwatch character Jesse McCree.

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Microsoft is hosting another Free Play Days event on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S, making a handful of games free-to-play for the weekend. There are three games up for grabs this time, and they cover a pretty wide range of genres between them. This Free Play Days weekend is headlined by none other than Overwatch, which rolled out a cross-play beta earlier this week.

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As announced earlier in the month, cross-play has arrived in Overwatch. Cross-play allows console players not only to group and find matches together regardless of platform, but it allows them to do the same with PC players too (with some restrictions, obviously). Cross-play is launching in beta today, but it's available to everyone who wants to sign up for it.

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It's been just a little over five years since Overwatch launched - its fifth anniversary came at the end of May - and while a lot of fans are probably looking forward to the eventual arrival of Overwatch 2, today we learned that the first game is about to get a big update. Blizzard has confirmed that Overwatch will soon be getting cross-play, which will allow players across PC, Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X to play with and against each other.

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Scholastic imprint Away From Keyboard (AFK) has released the second installment in Blizzard Entertainment's Overwatch novel series for young adults. The new book is titled Deadlock Rebels and it revolves around the player-favorite character Jesse McCree, as well as the novel's protagonist Elizabeth Caledonia Ashe and B.O.B., her omnic butler.

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This week Blizzard showed a whole bunch of new details about Overwatch 2, starting with a MAJOR change to the basic PvP setup. With the next generation of this game universe, the code Overwatch PvP experience "will shift from six players per team to five players per team." The new team will consist of a standard 1x Tank, 2x Damage, and 2x Support heroes. The main reason for this: decluttering the battlefield.

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It's been a little while since we last heard from Overwatch 2, but that's all changing soon. Today, Overwatch 2's new director Aaron Keller delivered his first Developer Update on Overwatch - a series that former Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan started in the early days of the original game - to tell us when our next look at Overwatch 2 will be coming around the bend. As it turns out, we don't have to wait very long.

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It's something of the end of an era over at Blizzard today, as Jeff Kaplan has announced that he's leaving the company. Kaplan has been at the company for nearly 20 years, and got his start at Blizzard working as a designer and one of the game directors on World of Warcraft and later its first two expansions, The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King. Kaplan is perhaps best known, however, as the lead game designer and game director on Overwatch.

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Almost half a year ago, NVIDIA introduced a new technology that went beyond just displaying breathtaking graphics. Although it still had something to do with what you do see in the end, NVIDIA Reflex is more focused on reducing the gap between clicking a mouse button and seeing its effect on the screen. This latency-reducing technology, however, needs more than just NVIDIA hardware. It also needs games to actually support Reflex and Overwatch is just the latest to join that exclusive club.

Display technologies are naturally concerned about things like refresh rates, response rates, tearing, and the like but, in the world of competitive esports, there are other factors that could mean the difference between glorious victory and embarrassing defeat. NVIDIA Reflex tries to solve the problem of system latency, also called input lag, that sometimes makes enemies seem almost invincible just because your god-like bullet missed your opponent's head.

Unlike with other NVIDIA technologies like G-SYNC, it takes more than just hardware to see Reflex in action. Games have to actually integrate the tech and support it, which is why there were only 14 games that supported it. Now there are fifteen, with Overwatch jumping into the fray, guns a-blazing.

With NVIDIA Reflex enabled on Overwatch, the game is advertised to be 50% more responsive, a critical increase for a fast-paced, twitch-based competitive shooter. It's even better if you have a "Reflex Latency Analyzer-compatible Monitor", one that can raise the response rate up to 360 Hz. At that point, you might as well invest in a Reflex-compatible mouse while you're at it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsFhdr5jGEE

NVIDIA Reflex is compatible with GPUs as old as the GeForce GTX 900. Users will need to get the latest Game Ready Driver and update Overwatch before they see the switch to toggle it in-game.

If you were holding out hope for either Diablo 4 or Overwatch 2 releasing in 2021, then we unfortunately have some sour news for you. It looks like neither game is going to make it out the gate this year, with Activision-Blizzard reporting in a recent call with investors the launches of Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2 aren't being included in its outlook for 2021.

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This week the folks at Blizzard responsible for pumping up their next major games conference revealed a set of "packs" before the show. These packs include goodies for games of all sorts, including Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch, and StarCraft II. Also in the mix for goods were Diablo III, and World of Warcraft. The packs were made available this week for approximately $20, $40, and $60 USD, depending on which level you were looking for.

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If you're looking for something to play over the holidays, it seems that Blizzard has you covered. As it tends to do every once in a while, Blizzard has made Overwatch free-to-play for a limited time, allowing those who have yet to take the plunge check it out without spending any money first. The difference this time around is the length of time Overwatch is going free-to-play.

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