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At BlizzCon this weekend, Blizzard announced Overwatch's next hero, Ashe, and mocked another, Echo, coming a bit later. Now, the game director, Jeff Kaplan, has given more details on the number of new characters to come, stating in a new interview that Blizzard has planned six new heroes. Ashe and Echo are apparently counted in this figure, which makes many new ones. It'll take "years" before they're all released, said the game director.
"We planned our next six heroes, which for us are years," Kaplan told Eurogamer. "[Echo], tentatively, is one of these heroes. "
Overwatch was launched with 21 heroes. Ashe, a shooter damage character, is the 29th. Echo could follow Ashe, but Kaplan said nothing was decided on the timeline at this point. You can watch Ashe's trailer trailer in the embedded video above.
Overwatch remains popular and Blizzard attracts new players through the shooter's free weekends. The game could theoretically attract even more new players if it became a free title, but would Blizzard ever do it? Kaplan said the game was not designed to be a free game (it's been a paid title since its launch), but he pointed out that the free game model "should always be a consideration."
That being said, Kaplan stressed: "We have not seriously thought about the possibility of putting Overwatch into play for free at the moment."
Last May, Blizzard announced that Overwatch had reached 40 million players. It is therefore a huge success. In terms of its commercial fortunes, the system earns much more than the initial price through the microtransaction-powered loot box system. The boxes of surprises are controversial and in Belgium, Blizzard has suppressed them to comply with the rules of the country. Still according to Kaplan, Blizzard believes that booty chests are a commercial system.
"We are sticking to surprise boxes, we are obviously not in agreement with the Belgian decision, but we respect the laws of the country and we want to adhere to them," said Kaplan.
The Overwatch surprise box system is "user-friendly for gamers," said Kaplan. You can only spend money in chests containing cosmetic items. they never have elements that really have an impact on the gameplay. Money generated by Blizzard through the box office helps the studio to finance the development of elements such as new heroes and other elements of the live service.
The Battle Royale game of Epic Fortnite has been very successful with its Battle Pass system – as other great games are adopting – but Overwatch keeps it to booty chests for a pass.
"It would be a huge amount of work to pass overwatch of surprise boxes to Battle Pass, or even just add a Battle Pass," Kaplan said. "The Battle Pass is very stylish at Fortnite and it should be commended for the work that they have accomplished, but that's not trivial." Even though we thought it was the best idea and that we wanted to do it tomorrow, it's very unlikely at the moment, but it's a brilliant game design, distinct from all commercial considerations. "
Make sure you read the entire interview of Eurogamer because it addresses a number of other important topics, such as the possibility of a Nintendo Switch version, cross-play between competing systems, etc.
In other BlizzCon news, Blizzard has announced a new Diablo game for mobile devices, and some people are not happy with it.
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