The Overwatch closed beta had begun in October. Now, Blizzard has announced that the beta will be taking a break until early next year.
Blizzard has announced on a blog post that the Overwatch beta will go on hiatus until sometime in January. This break comes after over a month of testing, with more than 900,000 games having been played. Blizzard claims that it has obtained high amounts of “raw data” and feedback from fans. “This phase of development has been key, but now it’s time to analyze the data we have, dig into your feedback even further, and put that knowledge to use as best we can,” the developer stated.
This will be done temporarily by shutting down the beta on Thursday, December 10th at 9 a.m. PST. Blizzard explains: “During this downtime, we’re looking forward to making more improvements to the game, as well as continuing to work on in-development features like spectating and progression.”
The closed beta will return in “mid-to-late January.” All those who currently have access to the beta will still have access then, and more will be added. Blizzard does state, however, that the “exact timing and how many players are invited will be determined by our testing needs.”
Don’t expect to get into the current round of testing, however; Blizzard will not be adding any more testers before ending the current beta test.
Overwatch will release in 2016. The game will release on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. There will be no cross-platform play across PC and console due to the advantage PC players may have.