Overwatch Now Supports Cross-Play

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Overwatch Now Supports Cross-Play

In the latest Developer Update, Aaron Keller announced that Overwatch will now support cross-play between all platforms.


This is a great day for the entire Overwatch community: cross-play is coming to Overwatch. This means players who own the game on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, or Xbox Series X/S will now be able to play together, no matter the console they are on.

This new feature comes as the Battle.net application goes under major changes. Friends lists will now feature all of your friends, no matter their region. Previously, players had to switch regions to talk to friends from a specific territory, and change regions to talk to other friends from across the world. Everything is now merged into a single friend list, to make it easier to socialize on Blizzard’s games.

Cross-platform play is here

The words Overwatch Cross Play Beta" appears with a dual-sided arrow on a purple grid background.

 

The app also updated its logo, but that is not the biggest news of the day: Battle.net now includes cross-platform functionality. This means players can gather with their friends no matter their region or the console they play with. However, cross-play won’t be happening with China, which remains its own separate region.

What does it mean for Overwatch? Players from across the world can now team up, no matter where they are from or their favorite console. If you play on console, you will now have to link your Battle.net account to your console. Once this step is completed, you are done and can play with your friends, wherever they are. PC players have nothing to do, as they already have a Battle.net account.

As jumping into a game with a PC Widowmaker main can be quite a steep challenge for console players, competitive games are not enabled with cross-play. For balance purposes, PC players can only play competitive games against other PC players, while console players fight other console players. Aim-assist for console players will also be disabled when playing with PC players.

If cross-play allows players to team up from across the console war, cross-progression is not yet planned. This means everything you unlocked on your account won’t be available when teaming up with players using a different system.

To celebrate the launch of cross-play, every player who logs in to Overwatch by the end of 2021 will receive a Golden Loot Box.

Overwatch ESTNN image by ESPAT Timo Verdeil.

Overwatch Now Supports Cross-Play
Ophelie Castelot
Ophelie is both an esport and journalism lover. She is the former head of the CS:GO section for a major esport website. Ophelie has been analyzing Overwatch ever since its release in 2016.