‘900p docked and 720p undocked’
While Blizzard tries to see if cross-play “makes sense” for Overwatch, they’re going full speed ahead with the Switch port on October 15. Thanks to Blizzard communications manager Nazih Fares, we now have a few more details on what that port actually entails.
First up, the basics: Overwatch will run “smoothly” at 30FPS, and will allow for resolutions of up to 720p undocked, and 900p docked. According to Fares Iron Galaxy was the studio behind the port, who has handled several other Switch games, including Diablo III for Blizzard (they’re like Bethesda’s pocket Panic Button go-to these days).
Then there’s the most interesting news of all: native voice chat. According to a now-deleted tweet from Fares (which was screen-capped by a Reddit member) “voice chat uses Blizzard servers…[so] just plug in a headset.” This would be a fairly big deal, as first-party games don’t even go to this length for players.
Now why was the tweet deleted? It’s possible that Fares ventured too far into “how the sausage was made” territory in terms of revealing that Blizzard (and not Nintendo) servers would handle it, but given how forthcoming he’s been about every other facet of the game, his comment seems accurate. We’ve reached out for clarification.
Nazih Fares [Twitter]
Published: Sep 6, 2019 08:00 am