Blizzard Entertainment President J. Allen Brack has been discussing big plans for the Overwatch game universe. During a recent call to investors, he stated that “Overwatch is a huge tentpole franchise for Blizzard and we’re continuing to dedicate the resources and the attention so that we can continue to grow the community and the franchise over time.”
As part of this commitment, Brack affirmed that the company will add “new heroes and new maps and new experiences” in the coming years. The team will also be “focusing on the other work that they have.” What this other work could be is the subject of a lot of speculation.
The idea of adding new characters and maps is not new, as it has been the cornerstone of the game since its initial release when it was stated that new heroes would be included in the initial purchase price of the game. Perhaps a spin-off game is in the cards, and if so, it would make sense to maintain the fast-paced action of the game in mind. When speculating about what these other projects could be, we can take a look to the past, specifically at project Titan.
In 2007, speculation was high that Blizzard was working on an entirely new MMO within a new universe entirely separate from its existing IPs. However, the Titan project was canceled by Blizzard internally in May of 2013, shifting developers around until roughly forty members of the canceled project used the already-developed assets to create what eventually became Overwatch. Now that the brand has grown in terms of popularity and within the esports scene, perhaps Blizzard will look to revisit its previous concept.
If not an MMO, perhaps these other works could refer to the creation of single-player focused campaigns within the existing Overwatch game. Another option might be some form of a mobile game, which would be consistent with Blizzard’s recent announcement to focus on its “proven franchises” in 2019.
Whatever Blizzard has in store, we likely won’t get an official announcement for a while. Blizzard confirmed recently that it would not be attending Gamescom 2019, which is due to “part of a renewed effort this year to maintain our focus on development, for our current games and our future projects.”
