Blizzard has announced what’s coming up for Season 12 of Overwatch 2. But more importantly, they’re finally doing Game Pass.
If you connect your Battle.net account to an eligible Game Pass account, you will be getting a host of Overwatch 2 entitlements beginning this September 17. This will be very similar to how Valorant players get more out of their game on Game Pass.
For launch, Game Pass subscribers get 30 Mythic prisms, and these six skins:
- Cardboard Reinhardt
- Turtleship D.Va
- Cyberdragon Hanzo
- Street Runner Genji
- Bee Mercy
- Cleric Lifeweaver
This batch of entitlements are good to claim until October 21, but consumers can already link their accounts now to get ahead of the rush. Other future entitlements will include a stackable XP boost, and cosmetics from older seasons, and of course, they will be your to keep as long as you keep both accounts.
You are probably already acquainted with our new little Martian support hero Juno. Blizzard quite naughtily timed her test period at the same time as Concord’s open beta. Similarly, Season 12’s launch date this August 20 is a few days away from Concord’s release date on August 23.
Aside from a new hero, Season 12 will feature an Egypt themed Premium Battle Pass, as the heroes reexplore the Temple of Anubis. The Premium Battle Pass will come with Bast Doomfist, Oni Ana, Thoth Illari, Dorothy Ashe, and Captain Sigma skins, but you also have the opportunity to earn the Mythic Anubis Reaper Hero Skin, or the Mythic Midnight Sun Ana Weapon Skin.
The rest of the Battle Pass entitlements are the same as you’ve come to expect, so let’s move on to other announced changes. They’re bringing new changes to Competitive, and to start everyone off on the same foot, the ranks are getting reset again. There will be hero rebalancing as well, such as tweaking Lifeweaver’s Petal Platform.
There will be a new game mode called Clash, where players fight over multiple capture points with dynamic spawns. The other map joining Temple of Anubis is Hanaoka, which will then take you back to Shimada Castle.
Even with all the excitement of a new Season and hero coming to Overwatch 2, it’s clearly Game Pass that is the big news today. Valorant just got officially added to Console Game Pass, and of course, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will be on Game Pass Day One, that is, October 25, 2024. These games will be competing with each other for Xbox users’ attention, but that’s not that big a deal as it sounds. The overlap between these player communities is not that big either, and of course, Game Pass offers a really enticing way to get the most out of all these games.
More importantly, it’s stiff competition for PlayStation Plus, and also, Sony’s upcoming hero shooter, Concord. Once again, we aren’t going to declare that this round of console wars is over, but it’s clear that Microsoft has been quietly stacking the deck while gamers don’t even notice.
