Overwatch 2 game director Aaron Keller reckons the sequel's updates were "too conservative" in the past, but going forward, he wants "a future where we become less conservative and create high-impact, high-octane moments that hopefully blow your minds."
In a new 'Director's Take' blog, Keller rewound the clocks and looked back to the start of the year when Blizzard Entertainment added "big new features" like unlockable perks, the return of loot boxes, and a massive third-person mode called Stadium, putting the sequel on steadier ground than ever.
The aim of the most recent, mid-year Season 18 "wasn't just to make a big splash, but to also level up the whole game," Keller continued. "If you look at what we released this season, you’ll start to see a pattern. We doubled down on Perks, upgraded our Progression system, added to our Competitive systems, and launched a massive set of releases for Stadium."
And from now on, Overwatch 2 is going to follow the same model - one dramatic update at the start of the year, and another that smooths everything out in the middle: "The overall strategy that we've been using to guide our releases is to start every year with a huge, game-defining moment and then follow it up with a big mid-year beat."
When testing the strategy, the team were apparently "worried about making changes to the core game [that] could turn people away from it." But Overwatch 2 is in a better place now than it's been since launch, "so we made plans to do the same thing this year with the release of Perks in Season 15."
"When I look back at the history of our releases in Overwatch, I think we've been too conservative," Keller added. As we release more game-defining features, it seems to increase your excitement for the future of the game. It does the same for us!"
For 2026, the team is aiming "to kick the year off with something huge that changes the way people think about playing the game and I think we're getting comfortable making these bigger and bigger each year." They also want another "mid-year season that doubles down on those features."
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