‘Overwatch’ gets high sales for U.K., dev hints at some Play of the Game improvements

Blizzard’s newest shooter IP has achieved a new record. “Overwatch” has topped the charts in terms of physical sales in the U.K.

“Overwatch” has achieved 47 percent of launch week sales for the physical copies alone on the PS4. It was a rather close number for the Xbox One at 36 percent, and 18 percent was for PC sales, Eurogamer reported.

To give fans a glimpse of just how fast-selling “Overwatch” is, the source Chart-Track stated that it had overtaken the console sales for “Diablo 3” and “StarCraft 64,” which was Blizzard’s other IPs, in terms of launch week physical sales.

Currently, “Overwatch” sits at the top of the charts. It has already overtaken “Uncharted 4,” “Doom,” “Homefront The Revolution” and “The Division,” among others.

In an interview with GameSpot, Blizzard’s Lead Software engineer Rowan Hamilton has zoomed in on the Play of the Game feature, which allows highlights of the game to be capture at the end of the battle

“We wanted to make it a really cool social moment at the end of the game, where it’s not just your team but the other team seeing this epic thing—well, hopefully epic thing—that happened during the game and you can all chat about it and bond over how cool that Mercy res was,” said Hamilton.

Hamilton did note that Play of the Game has been getting feedback regarding the focus of the mechanic. For most sessions with Play of the Game, intense snipes and damages usually take precedence over support plays. And this is where the developer is trying to improve the feature.

Currently, Blizzard is trying to look at the numbers and algorithm that determines the Play of the Game. This means that some aspects, such as resurrection and support can actually be given more weight. He did admit that it is an ongoing process, and one that will hopefully have a more comprehensive way of determining which action takes the Play of the Game.